Not everyone is forgetting. I mentioned Apple's investment in ARM earlier. But good history, thanks for filling in so much detail.
Fair enough - apologies for missing your comment. I was really addressing the earlier commenters, as well as Sam Oliver, author of the article. On the whole, he did a very good job, but the following sentence set me off: "As first reported by AppleInsider in 2008, Apple has been a licensee of the ARM architecture for years, but the company became invested in the chip-making business when it purchased P.A. Semi for $278 million."
NeXTSTEP also run in HP PA and Sun Sparc. Some say that NeXT ported it to IBM POWER. What is now Cocoa (OPENSTEP or OpenStep, check this for the possible spellings), also run on top of Windows and Solaris (possibly HP-UX). And the GNU implementation of OpenStep runs currently on top of most UNIX and lookalikes. So, I think Apple has the most portable modern commercial operating system ever. Am I forgetting anything?
NeXT didn't port to IBM Power. We had ported NS 3.0/3.1 to Big Iron and it ran circles around AIX. The AIX department head demanded an emulator layer on top of AIX and then ran NS on top of that. It was demoed to be slower than AIX and thus IBM pulled back from licensing NS 3.x from NeXT.
Sun later approached with the idea of Openstep which entailed Sun selling the Hardware and us at NeXT selling the software. The problem was the ego battle in management and profit sharing.
We got the Openstep spec and OS 4.0 for Solaris was produced but then Sun moved away from ObjC and with their experience created Oak/Java.
Note that the PS3 and XBOX are selling at thin margins in hopes to get revenue from the game content end. Apple doesn't do that and likely couldn't do that if they tried.
I don't know about an included Blu-ray player, but having one that form fits on top of it and connects via s simple USB2 plug would be great. Of course, Apple has a vested interest in the iTS so I don't that is likely, though considerably more likely than Blu-ray in their Mac notebooks.
True, but that makes no difference to the end user.
The Apple TV is far too limited and far too expensive to stand any chance of success. I really can't understand why Apple seem so disinterested in the living room as other players seem to be making a success of it. It seems a far more lucrative market potentially than ebook readers, for example.
Fair enough - apologies for missing your comment. I was really addressing the earlier commenters, as well as Sam Oliver, author of the article. On the whole, he did a very good job, but the following sentence set me off: "As first reported by AppleInsider in 2008, Apple has been a licensee of the ARM architecture for years, but the company became invested in the chip-making business when it purchased P.A. Semi for $278 million."
No apologies required. The article misstated the history, even if you ignore the AIM alliance with Motorola and IBM. So this is the third time, not the first!
True, but that makes no difference to the end user.
The Apple TV is far too limited and far too expensive to stand any chance of success. I really can't understand why Apple seem so disinterested in the living room as other players seem to be making a success of it. It seems a far more lucrative market potentially than ebook readers, for example.
I see your point, but remember that the customer comes after the product exists so while it may make difference to the end user if the company is profitable or not it does make a difference to the company. Sony, MS, TiVo and others are all trying to add more features that add more networking and social networking capabilities to their appliances but they still aren't making a great deal of money.
The AppleTV, which many call a failure, is likely the best selling stand-alone media extender on the market. It's also made money than the Xbox, which is now turning a slight per-unit profit but still has billions in loses to make up. It's just not a great place for a company like Apple who still seems to look upon itself as a boutique electronics company.
Regarding your "ebook readers" comment, note that Apple didn't get into the stand-alone e-ink market because it too offers little to no profit. Instead they made a tablet that does the web, audio, video, email, apps, and has a great ereader and bookstore. We might have to wait until Apple has a clear plan for the device they want to make for a market segment, like they did with the decade old tablet market that has been a failure as a whole.
While I'd love to see a new AppleTV with ARM using the iPhone OS core with the 10-foot user interface and an SDK, I think a much more profitable avenue ? though in many ways similar and not mutually exclusive ? is a home server running the A4 ARM chip, a basic version of IPhone OS with simple consumer based remote access with multiple drives. HP and Windows Home Server make a pretty decent product and it will back up Time Machine from Macs, but it's missing the Apple touch that could make it a great product. I think that would be considerably more profitable as home networks and redundant, centralized storage become a necessity.
Upgraded a long time ago and again several times in between last year when I got a MBP. If you read the post you would see that it was fond memories of the NeXt. Back then, the NeXt OS was ahead of its time and beat Apple's System 7 and Windows "whatever" it was back then.
I am still amazed at the NeXT OS. I have a still-running NeXT Cube with the '040 CPU and it's really a marvel of engineering. I still like tear-away menus and NeXT's version of 'publish and subscribe' which works beautifully even across networks. It was so far ahead during its era.
The optical drive was not reliable and I lost a good portion of my college career when that thing failed to mount discs. Even with that, I still love that thing like a first crush.
Seems unlikely there was any reliable source of information to support this article's assertions. Also, from my POV the PA Semi acquisition may not make real financial sense due to several factors. First, there were reports that the top intellectual talent left PA Semi to start a new chip company so Apple can only use what they bought and kept, and second, these firms flourish because their immense development costs are covered by selling their chip designs to a wide variety of companies, extending the life of the investment and increasing the return. Now Apple only will design for Apple, which is great as long as every product they sell continues to be a blockbuster. Post-Jobs this may be less and less likely.
The "top intellectual talent" you are referring to are the (according to EETimes)Mark Hayter, system architect, and Amarjit Gill former founder and in charge of sales and dev for PASemi. Arguably the top intellectual talent for PASemi was and is now for Apple, Dan Dobberpuhl. Hayter is now rumored to be devving stuff for his and Gill's startup Agnilux to reduce server power consumption by designing a multiprocessing ARM chip for Cisco. So server-side stuff not mobile stuff. The critical issue will be if Dobberpuhl is going to be folding into the legacy VLSI team or if he is going to run either "without portfolio" or head up a separate design team entirely.
As far as selling blockbusters, you seem to be blithely ignoring the marketing numbers - you have a satisfied, nay even ENTHUSIASTIC (based on customer satisfaction numbers) audience of consumers who have been trained to use Apple multitouch products - running in excess of 75 million so far and growing. Any technology marketing wag will recite for you the usual uses for home computers by the average consumer, (and exactly what Stevo presented as the key delivery points for the iPad) browsing, email, photos, video, music, games and eBooks. But there is much room for growth within Apple as they build out the technology vision they drive, so their investment is pretty safe for the nonce.
And I think IMHO you vastly underestimate Jobses ego. He is not going to let Apple languish in his eventual absence. He will undoubtably build the kind of management team and imprint the company with the design vision he has to ensure it continues well into the future. Just to spite the doom-sayers if for no other reason.
And I think IMHO you vastly underestimate Jobses ego. He is not going to let Apple languish in his eventual absence. He will undoubtably build the kind of management team and imprint the company with the design vision he has to ensure it continues well into the future. Just to spite the doom-sayers if for no other reason.
As far as his ego goes... the future looks bright.
As far as his ego goes... the future looks bright.
The one billion properly includes the increase shares of Imagination Technologies ( Owner of PowerVR )and Purchase of PASemi. Because 1B is A LOT. You could buy a third of ARM.
ARM and IMG are IP based company. So you hear about the new and greatest development well in advance. These IP needs another year or two before they even get into their licensee hands for design let alone manufacturing.
The question is will Apple license the A4 chip to other technology companies for their devices?
Probably not.
Apple's current business model is not based on selling licenses. They built the A4 to provide a competitive advantage. Almost everything Apple does is focused on driving the sales of its high-margin hardware.
Seems unlikely there was any reliable source of information to support this article's assertions. Also, from my POV the PA Semi acquisition may not make real financial sense due to several factors. First, there were reports that the top intellectual talent left PA Semi to start a new chip company so Apple can only use what they bought and kept, and second, these firms flourish because their immense development costs are covered by selling their chip designs to a wide variety of companies, extending the life of the investment and increasing the return. Now Apple only will design for Apple, which is great as long as every product they sell continues to be a blockbuster. Post-Jobs this may be less and less likely.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anantksundaram
And, if it did so, how would it matter?
bingo
Quote:
Originally Posted by rhyde
It would also destroy Mac sales. Being able to run Windows is a *big* incentive to buy a Mac for many people. Most of the people I convince to buy a Mac have no interest because they've got so much money invested in Windows software. When I point out that they *can* run all that software on a Mac, they instantly become much more open to getting a Mac. Down the road, they may wind up being Windows haters like many people around here; but without that bridge, they would never have become Mac users in the first place.
Take the Mac and turn it into something that can't run Windows (at full speed), and you lose the ability to attract PC users this way. I don't even think SJ would give up that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bugsnw
Well just look at what's coming right around the corner: iPad. Over 10 hours of battery life. Not much blew me away in SJ's presentation, but the half-day battery life sure did.
This is what's known as 'competitive advantage.' It's part of what is going to make the iPad special and different from the competition.
apple can sell this chip to many companies not in direct competion w/ apple
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wiggin
I think Apple's PPC partners bailed on Apple before Apple bailed on them. They were only interested in the server (IBM) and embeded (Motorola) markets and showed little interest in working with Apple in making PPC a viable general computer CPU. Apple only switched to Intel when the PPC alliance failed to produce a G5 capable of being put into a laptop.
As for the A4, who is Apple going to drop? There are no partners other than the fab shops. It's all Apple.
YES YES YES great news if the chip works out ok
Quote:
Originally Posted by davesmall
As Steve Jobs stated in the iPad intro presentation, Apple is already the world's largest mobile devices company in revenue $$ when you roll together computers, iPods, and iPhones.
Apple wants to achieve superior battery life for a high level of performance. They don't want to pay a vendor like Intel to achieve those results only to see them offering the same chip for sale to competitors.
These chips are so important to Apple that they want to be in control of their own destiny. They were hurt in the past when IBM and Motorola took their PowerPC road maps in a different direction.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kotatsu
Apple need to stick this chip in a refreshed Apple TV. Throw away whatever ancient chipset is "powering" it currently and put something in there which can handle 1080p with ease, and will be able to provide a modern UI which isn't painfully slow to use.
And bring down the cost too. For Apple TV for be a success without additional features, be that a blu-ray drive, TV tuner, or whatever else, it will need to be vastly cheaper than it is now. I'm thinking £50 or less.
dude you really need to get a life
your branded a troll because you always move every thread into the triple threat troll beef ring <<multi tasking glossy BD >> the topic is about the cost of a tiny low heat low power all in one > A4 chip that is 100 percent all apple
think ?? why is that so important ??
all apple mean for apple
control over every part of production
full Profit
SMALL devices with great power and long battery life .
Quote:
Originally Posted by hnorr
Everyone seems to be forgetting that Apple co-founded ARM (then called Advanced RISC Machines)> The started it way back in 1990, in partnership with Acorn Computers (a British company that at the time was a major supplier of home and school computers in the UK) and VLSI Technology, a Silicon Valley chip design and manufacturing company directly descended from Fairchild Semiconductors, the first semiconductor outfit in Silicon Valley. Acorn had an early RISC chip, and Apple apparently wanted to develop the technology and use it for the Newton, in addition to licensing it to other companies to help cover the (large) costs of development.
In that sense, with the iPad, history has just come around again to where it all began.
For years after the founding of ARM, Apple owned a large share of it. In the mid--to-late 199s, when Apple wasn't doing well, they gradually sold off most of their ARM stock, at a very large profit, to raise money. By the year 2000 Apple's stake was down to 6 percent. I'm not sure whether they finally sold all of it or still retain a little.
Another interesting bit of history: the former Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), which used to make minicomputers and workstations, acquired a design license from ARM sometime in the 90s, and together with ARM they developed a really fast (for the time) variant called the StrongARM, which was used in the last version of the Newton. In 1997 Intel acquired DEC's chip division, including the StrongARM license, design team, and fab, as part of the settlement of a lawsuit between them. So for a while Intel actually owned the best ARM design on the market. Though all or nearly all of the DEC people left, Intel later developed a derivative of the StrongARM called XScale, but they apparently still had to pay some royalties to ARM, and there were always internal tensions within Intel about competing with their own bread-and-butter x86 architecture. In 2006, as part of a restructuring and consolidation campaign, they finally sold off the XScale, and with it their rights to ARM technology.
thanks for the info
Quote:
Originally Posted by masstrkiller
The question is will Apple license the A4 chip to other technology companies for their devices?
NO
and yes
APPLE WILL produce it for the USA MILITARY <<pa semi has past contacts with the ARMY . >>
THE one billion price tag is what it takes to bring a chip to market cradle to grave so to speak
yet i wonder if they included the server farm in the price quote also
APPLE WILL produce it for the USA MILITARY <<pa semi has past contacts with the ARMY . >>
Past P.A. Semi activities for US Military had nothing to do with ARM architecture, but PowerPC. I doubt designing for Military is high on Apple priority list
"I'm thinking Apple is working on making OSX independent of any particular processor type.
Software will not need to be customized for Intel vs PowerPC vs ARM.
The OS will accept the instructions and translate for the processor. "
If you make the OS do all the work, software developers don't need to optimize for a particular processor type. This would make it easier for developers.
You'd have to dump OSX completely and write a new OS. No operating system or programs work that way. You'd have to incorporate emulation and it would be slow as hell.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Millmoss
Everybody is in business to make money, or they aren't in business at all.
Apple wasn't being run by Steve Jobs when the PPC project began, and he wasn't running it when the cloning experiment was started. When he shut it down, this was a fete accomplie, since it was already a complete disaster for Apple. This had nothing to do with anyone's willingness to do anything except save Apple from destruction.
Cloning wasn't the disaster, it kept users on the platform that might have left. Apple under Spindler was the disaster.
Quote:
That said, IBM and especially Motorola were always weak partners for Apple.
After the fact. I would bet you were saying the exact opposite during the PowerPC days. But under the circumstances anyone would be a weak partner. Apple does not work well with others.
Past P.A. Semi activities for US Military had nothing to do with ARM architecture, but PowerPC. I doubt designing for Military is high on Apple priority list
P.A. semi's chip was actually based on the G5 core.
Quote:
Originally Posted by extremeskater
Well I am not sure what the numbers are on Mac users that use bootcamp but it was reported here and other places on the web that 85% of Mac users also have a Windows system.
Being able to install Windows on your Mac is always part of the Apple sales pitch in any Apple store I have walked into.
Use it or not, its a great selling point to potential switchers. The two biggest factors to Apple's current success are boot camp and intel processors. Without both of them, Macs wouldn't be selling anywhere near what they are.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kotatsu
True, but that makes no difference to the end user.
The Apple TV is far too limited and far too expensive to stand any chance of success. I really can't understand why Apple seem so disinterested in the living room as other players seem to be making a success of it. It seems a far more lucrative market potentially than ebook readers, for example.
With the iPad, Apple can get its on take on it. Jobs and his crew are pretty much at a loss when it comes to the living room. They tried to make the best product they knew how and it wasn't what the consumer wanted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism
The AppleTV, which many call a failure, is likely the best selling stand-alone media extender on the market.
That's not saying much. They're still getting their butts kicked six ways to sunday by traditional optical media players with no end in sight. Maybe if they got rid of the oppressive DRM or came up with a standard industry wide standard, but the user doesn't want his/her living room to be locked into a company.
Quote:
It's also made money than the Xbox, which is now turning a slight per-unit profit but still has billions in loses to make up.
You never make any money on the device, the traditional way is making money on licensing fees on the software. Problem is that Sony and Microsoft went so high end and so expensive with the PS3 and Xbox 360 in that only the most hardcore gamers could afford them the first few years and to get them mainstream they had to drop prices to where they were still losing money. It would be akin to Apple dropping everything but the 27" iMacs and 17" MBPs and expecting the customers to all follow.
You'd have to dump OSX completely and write a new OS. No operating system or programs work that way. You'd have to incorporate emulation and it would be slow as hell.
I've recently upgraded from my venerable G4 iMac to a Mini, and all my PPC apps run perfectly through Rosetta, with no noticeable lag whatsoever. There was even VirtualPC back in the day, and that worked (once you'd figured out how to install Windows on it! ) Surely with the CP power available today emulation is a viable option - there may even be a hardware solution - a piece of silicon to do the emulation?
If this was possible, think of the benefits of having a CPU-agnostic OS to both Apple and the end user.
Cloning wasn't the disaster, it kept users on the platform that might have left. Apple under Spindler was the disaster.
It was a disaster from day one because it never had a prayer of succeeding. It was conceptually broken.
Quote:
After the fact. I would bet you were saying the exact opposite during the PowerPC days. But under the circumstances anyone would be a weak partner. Apple does not work well with others.
You lost that bet. Motorola, for example, pulled all of the PPC computers off the desks of their employees and replaced them with x86 computers. I knew one Motorola employee at the time who wondered out loud if next they were going to be issued Nokia cell phones. They pulled the plug on WindowsNT for PPC. Motorola wouldn't even eat their own dog food. And of course we all remember the ads Motorola ran for their Mac clones outside the Mac magazines. Not.
Motorola was a lousy partner for Apple. IBM wasn't much better. Their interests simply did not coincide with Apple's, and in Motorola's case, Apple was dealing with general corporate cluelessness that made Apple's leadership at the time look positively enlightened.
Past P.A. Semi activities for US Military had nothing to do with ARM architecture, but PowerPC. I doubt designing for Military is high on Apple priority list
Comments
Not everyone is forgetting. I mentioned Apple's investment in ARM earlier. But good history, thanks for filling in so much detail.
Fair enough - apologies for missing your comment. I was really addressing the earlier commenters, as well as Sam Oliver, author of the article. On the whole, he did a very good job, but the following sentence set me off: "As first reported by AppleInsider in 2008, Apple has been a licensee of the ARM architecture for years, but the company became invested in the chip-making business when it purchased P.A. Semi for $278 million."
NeXTSTEP also run in HP PA and Sun Sparc. Some say that NeXT ported it to IBM POWER. What is now Cocoa (OPENSTEP or OpenStep, check this for the possible spellings), also run on top of Windows and Solaris (possibly HP-UX). And the GNU implementation of OpenStep runs currently on top of most UNIX and lookalikes. So, I think Apple has the most portable modern commercial operating system ever. Am I forgetting anything?
NeXT didn't port to IBM Power. We had ported NS 3.0/3.1 to Big Iron and it ran circles around AIX. The AIX department head demanded an emulator layer on top of AIX and then ran NS on top of that. It was demoed to be slower than AIX and thus IBM pulled back from licensing NS 3.x from NeXT.
Sun later approached with the idea of Openstep which entailed Sun selling the Hardware and us at NeXT selling the software. The problem was the ego battle in management and profit sharing.
We got the Openstep spec and OS 4.0 for Solaris was produced but then Sun moved away from ObjC and with their experience created Oak/Java.
Note that the PS3 and XBOX are selling at thin margins in hopes to get revenue from the game content end. Apple doesn't do that and likely couldn't do that if they tried.
I don't know about an included Blu-ray player, but having one that form fits on top of it and connects via s simple USB2 plug would be great. Of course, Apple has a vested interest in the iTS so I don't that is likely, though considerably more likely than Blu-ray in their Mac notebooks.
True, but that makes no difference to the end user.
The Apple TV is far too limited and far too expensive to stand any chance of success. I really can't understand why Apple seem so disinterested in the living room as other players seem to be making a success of it. It seems a far more lucrative market potentially than ebook readers, for example.
Fair enough - apologies for missing your comment. I was really addressing the earlier commenters, as well as Sam Oliver, author of the article. On the whole, he did a very good job, but the following sentence set me off: "As first reported by AppleInsider in 2008, Apple has been a licensee of the ARM architecture for years, but the company became invested in the chip-making business when it purchased P.A. Semi for $278 million."
No apologies required. The article misstated the history, even if you ignore the AIM alliance with Motorola and IBM. So this is the third time, not the first!
True, but that makes no difference to the end user.
The Apple TV is far too limited and far too expensive to stand any chance of success. I really can't understand why Apple seem so disinterested in the living room as other players seem to be making a success of it. It seems a far more lucrative market potentially than ebook readers, for example.
I see your point, but remember that the customer comes after the product exists so while it may make difference to the end user if the company is profitable or not it does make a difference to the company. Sony, MS, TiVo and others are all trying to add more features that add more networking and social networking capabilities to their appliances but they still aren't making a great deal of money.
The AppleTV, which many call a failure, is likely the best selling stand-alone media extender on the market. It's also made money than the Xbox, which is now turning a slight per-unit profit but still has billions in loses to make up. It's just not a great place for a company like Apple who still seems to look upon itself as a boutique electronics company.
Regarding your "ebook readers" comment, note that Apple didn't get into the stand-alone e-ink market because it too offers little to no profit. Instead they made a tablet that does the web, audio, video, email, apps, and has a great ereader and bookstore. We might have to wait until Apple has a clear plan for the device they want to make for a market segment, like they did with the decade old tablet market that has been a failure as a whole.
While I'd love to see a new AppleTV with ARM using the iPhone OS core with the 10-foot user interface and an SDK, I think a much more profitable avenue ? though in many ways similar and not mutually exclusive ? is a home server running the A4 ARM chip, a basic version of IPhone OS with simple consumer based remote access with multiple drives. HP and Windows Home Server make a pretty decent product and it will back up Time Machine from Macs, but it's missing the Apple touch that could make it a great product. I think that would be considerably more profitable as home networks and redundant, centralized storage become a necessity.
Upgraded a long time ago and again several times in between last year when I got a MBP. If you read the post you would see that it was fond memories of the NeXt. Back then, the NeXt OS was ahead of its time and beat Apple's System 7 and Windows "whatever" it was back then.
I am still amazed at the NeXT OS. I have a still-running NeXT Cube with the '040 CPU and it's really a marvel of engineering. I still like tear-away menus and NeXT's version of 'publish and subscribe' which works beautifully even across networks. It was so far ahead during its era.
The optical drive was not reliable and I lost a good portion of my college career when that thing failed to mount discs. Even with that, I still love that thing like a first crush.
Seems unlikely there was any reliable source of information to support this article's assertions. Also, from my POV the PA Semi acquisition may not make real financial sense due to several factors. First, there were reports that the top intellectual talent left PA Semi to start a new chip company so Apple can only use what they bought and kept, and second, these firms flourish because their immense development costs are covered by selling their chip designs to a wide variety of companies, extending the life of the investment and increasing the return. Now Apple only will design for Apple, which is great as long as every product they sell continues to be a blockbuster. Post-Jobs this may be less and less likely.
The "top intellectual talent" you are referring to are the (according to EETimes)Mark Hayter, system architect, and Amarjit Gill former founder and in charge of sales and dev for PASemi. Arguably the top intellectual talent for PASemi was and is now for Apple, Dan Dobberpuhl. Hayter is now rumored to be devving stuff for his and Gill's startup Agnilux to reduce server power consumption by designing a multiprocessing ARM chip for Cisco. So server-side stuff not mobile stuff. The critical issue will be if Dobberpuhl is going to be folding into the legacy VLSI team or if he is going to run either "without portfolio" or head up a separate design team entirely.
As far as selling blockbusters, you seem to be blithely ignoring the marketing numbers - you have a satisfied, nay even ENTHUSIASTIC (based on customer satisfaction numbers) audience of consumers who have been trained to use Apple multitouch products - running in excess of 75 million so far and growing. Any technology marketing wag will recite for you the usual uses for home computers by the average consumer, (and exactly what Stevo presented as the key delivery points for the iPad) browsing, email, photos, video, music, games and eBooks. But there is much room for growth within Apple as they build out the technology vision they drive, so their investment is pretty safe for the nonce.
And I think IMHO you vastly underestimate Jobses ego. He is not going to let Apple languish in his eventual absence. He will undoubtably build the kind of management team and imprint the company with the design vision he has to ensure it continues well into the future. Just to spite the doom-sayers if for no other reason.
And I think IMHO you vastly underestimate Jobses ego. He is not going to let Apple languish in his eventual absence. He will undoubtably build the kind of management team and imprint the company with the design vision he has to ensure it continues well into the future. Just to spite the doom-sayers if for no other reason.
As far as his ego goes... the future looks bright.
As far as his ego goes... the future looks bright.
The one billion properly includes the increase shares of Imagination Technologies ( Owner of PowerVR )and Purchase of PASemi. Because 1B is A LOT. You could buy a third of ARM.
ARM and IMG are IP based company. So you hear about the new and greatest development well in advance. These IP needs another year or two before they even get into their licensee hands for design let alone manufacturing.
The question is will Apple license the A4 chip to other technology companies for their devices?
Probably not.
Apple's current business model is not based on selling licenses. They built the A4 to provide a competitive advantage. Almost everything Apple does is focused on driving the sales of its high-margin hardware.
My guess is they spent about $100M on the reference design and packaged the A8 or A9 into the system on a chip design.
Who is saying that?
http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/05/apple-a4-ipad/
http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/06/ap...ooler-battery/
Source: http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulle...43#post7829943
great links
Seems unlikely there was any reliable source of information to support this article's assertions. Also, from my POV the PA Semi acquisition may not make real financial sense due to several factors. First, there were reports that the top intellectual talent left PA Semi to start a new chip company so Apple can only use what they bought and kept, and second, these firms flourish because their immense development costs are covered by selling their chip designs to a wide variety of companies, extending the life of the investment and increasing the return. Now Apple only will design for Apple, which is great as long as every product they sell continues to be a blockbuster. Post-Jobs this may be less and less likely.
And, if it did so, how would it matter?
bingo
It would also destroy Mac sales. Being able to run Windows is a *big* incentive to buy a Mac for many people. Most of the people I convince to buy a Mac have no interest because they've got so much money invested in Windows software. When I point out that they *can* run all that software on a Mac, they instantly become much more open to getting a Mac. Down the road, they may wind up being Windows haters like many people around here; but without that bridge, they would never have become Mac users in the first place.
Take the Mac and turn it into something that can't run Windows (at full speed), and you lose the ability to attract PC users this way. I don't even think SJ would give up that.
Well just look at what's coming right around the corner: iPad. Over 10 hours of battery life. Not much blew me away in SJ's presentation, but the half-day battery life sure did.
This is what's known as 'competitive advantage.' It's part of what is going to make the iPad special and different from the competition.
apple can sell this chip to many companies not in direct competion w/ apple
I think Apple's PPC partners bailed on Apple before Apple bailed on them. They were only interested in the server (IBM) and embeded (Motorola) markets and showed little interest in working with Apple in making PPC a viable general computer CPU. Apple only switched to Intel when the PPC alliance failed to produce a G5 capable of being put into a laptop.
As for the A4, who is Apple going to drop? There are no partners other than the fab shops. It's all Apple.
YES YES YES great news if the chip works out ok
As Steve Jobs stated in the iPad intro presentation, Apple is already the world's largest mobile devices company in revenue $$ when you roll together computers, iPods, and iPhones.
Apple wants to achieve superior battery life for a high level of performance. They don't want to pay a vendor like Intel to achieve those results only to see them offering the same chip for sale to competitors.
These chips are so important to Apple that they want to be in control of their own destiny. They were hurt in the past when IBM and Motorola took their PowerPC road maps in a different direction.
Apple need to stick this chip in a refreshed Apple TV. Throw away whatever ancient chipset is "powering" it currently and put something in there which can handle 1080p with ease, and will be able to provide a modern UI which isn't painfully slow to use.
And bring down the cost too. For Apple TV for be a success without additional features, be that a blu-ray drive, TV tuner, or whatever else, it will need to be vastly cheaper than it is now. I'm thinking £50 or less.
dude you really need to get a life
your branded a troll because you always move every thread into the triple threat troll beef ring <<multi tasking glossy BD >> the topic is about the cost of a tiny low heat low power all in one > A4 chip that is 100 percent all apple
think ?? why is that so important ??
all apple mean for apple
control over every part of production
full Profit
SMALL devices with great power and long battery life .
Everyone seems to be forgetting that Apple co-founded ARM (then called Advanced RISC Machines)> The started it way back in 1990, in partnership with Acorn Computers (a British company that at the time was a major supplier of home and school computers in the UK) and VLSI Technology, a Silicon Valley chip design and manufacturing company directly descended from Fairchild Semiconductors, the first semiconductor outfit in Silicon Valley. Acorn had an early RISC chip, and Apple apparently wanted to develop the technology and use it for the Newton, in addition to licensing it to other companies to help cover the (large) costs of development.
In that sense, with the iPad, history has just come around again to where it all began.
For years after the founding of ARM, Apple owned a large share of it. In the mid--to-late 199s, when Apple wasn't doing well, they gradually sold off most of their ARM stock, at a very large profit, to raise money. By the year 2000 Apple's stake was down to 6 percent. I'm not sure whether they finally sold all of it or still retain a little.
Another interesting bit of history: the former Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC), which used to make minicomputers and workstations, acquired a design license from ARM sometime in the 90s, and together with ARM they developed a really fast (for the time) variant called the StrongARM, which was used in the last version of the Newton. In 1997 Intel acquired DEC's chip division, including the StrongARM license, design team, and fab, as part of the settlement of a lawsuit between them. So for a while Intel actually owned the best ARM design on the market. Though all or nearly all of the DEC people left, Intel later developed a derivative of the StrongARM called XScale, but they apparently still had to pay some royalties to ARM, and there were always internal tensions within Intel about competing with their own bread-and-butter x86 architecture. In 2006, as part of a restructuring and consolidation campaign, they finally sold off the XScale, and with it their rights to ARM technology.
thanks for the info
The question is will Apple license the A4 chip to other technology companies for their devices?
NO
and yes
APPLE WILL produce it for the USA MILITARY <<pa semi has past contacts with the ARMY . >>
THE one billion price tag is what it takes to bring a chip to market cradle to grave so to speak
yet i wonder if they included the server farm in the price quote also
APPLE WILL produce it for the USA MILITARY <<pa semi has past contacts with the ARMY . >>
Past P.A. Semi activities for US Military had nothing to do with ARM architecture, but PowerPC. I doubt designing for Military is high on Apple priority list
You didn't fully read my comment.
"I'm thinking Apple is working on making OSX independent of any particular processor type.
Software will not need to be customized for Intel vs PowerPC vs ARM.
The OS will accept the instructions and translate for the processor. "
If you make the OS do all the work, software developers don't need to optimize for a particular processor type. This would make it easier for developers.
You'd have to dump OSX completely and write a new OS. No operating system or programs work that way. You'd have to incorporate emulation and it would be slow as hell.
Everybody is in business to make money, or they aren't in business at all.
Apple wasn't being run by Steve Jobs when the PPC project began, and he wasn't running it when the cloning experiment was started. When he shut it down, this was a fete accomplie, since it was already a complete disaster for Apple. This had nothing to do with anyone's willingness to do anything except save Apple from destruction.
Cloning wasn't the disaster, it kept users on the platform that might have left. Apple under Spindler was the disaster.
That said, IBM and especially Motorola were always weak partners for Apple.
After the fact. I would bet you were saying the exact opposite during the PowerPC days. But under the circumstances anyone would be a weak partner. Apple does not work well with others.
Past P.A. Semi activities for US Military had nothing to do with ARM architecture, but PowerPC. I doubt designing for Military is high on Apple priority list
P.A. semi's chip was actually based on the G5 core.
Well I am not sure what the numbers are on Mac users that use bootcamp but it was reported here and other places on the web that 85% of Mac users also have a Windows system.
Being able to install Windows on your Mac is always part of the Apple sales pitch in any Apple store I have walked into.
Use it or not, its a great selling point to potential switchers. The two biggest factors to Apple's current success are boot camp and intel processors. Without both of them, Macs wouldn't be selling anywhere near what they are.
True, but that makes no difference to the end user.
The Apple TV is far too limited and far too expensive to stand any chance of success. I really can't understand why Apple seem so disinterested in the living room as other players seem to be making a success of it. It seems a far more lucrative market potentially than ebook readers, for example.
With the iPad, Apple can get its on take on it. Jobs and his crew are pretty much at a loss when it comes to the living room. They tried to make the best product they knew how and it wasn't what the consumer wanted.
The AppleTV, which many call a failure, is likely the best selling stand-alone media extender on the market.
That's not saying much. They're still getting their butts kicked six ways to sunday by traditional optical media players with no end in sight. Maybe if they got rid of the oppressive DRM or came up with a standard industry wide standard, but the user doesn't want his/her living room to be locked into a company.
It's also made money than the Xbox, which is now turning a slight per-unit profit but still has billions in loses to make up.
You never make any money on the device, the traditional way is making money on licensing fees on the software. Problem is that Sony and Microsoft went so high end and so expensive with the PS3 and Xbox 360 in that only the most hardcore gamers could afford them the first few years and to get them mainstream they had to drop prices to where they were still losing money. It would be akin to Apple dropping everything but the 27" iMacs and 17" MBPs and expecting the customers to all follow.
You'd have to dump OSX completely and write a new OS. No operating system or programs work that way. You'd have to incorporate emulation and it would be slow as hell.
I've recently upgraded from my venerable G4 iMac to a Mini, and all my PPC apps run perfectly through Rosetta, with no noticeable lag whatsoever. There was even VirtualPC back in the day, and that worked (once you'd figured out how to install Windows on it!
If this was possible, think of the benefits of having a CPU-agnostic OS to both Apple and the end user.
Cloning wasn't the disaster, it kept users on the platform that might have left. Apple under Spindler was the disaster.
It was a disaster from day one because it never had a prayer of succeeding. It was conceptually broken.
After the fact. I would bet you were saying the exact opposite during the PowerPC days. But under the circumstances anyone would be a weak partner. Apple does not work well with others.
You lost that bet. Motorola, for example, pulled all of the PPC computers off the desks of their employees and replaced them with x86 computers. I knew one Motorola employee at the time who wondered out loud if next they were going to be issued Nokia cell phones. They pulled the plug on WindowsNT for PPC. Motorola wouldn't even eat their own dog food. And of course we all remember the ads Motorola ran for their Mac clones outside the Mac magazines. Not.
Motorola was a lousy partner for Apple. IBM wasn't much better. Their interests simply did not coincide with Apple's, and in Motorola's case, Apple was dealing with general corporate cluelessness that made Apple's leadership at the time look positively enlightened.
Past P.A. Semi activities for US Military had nothing to do with ARM architecture, but PowerPC. I doubt designing for Military is high on Apple priority list
and you know this how ??