I just came back from Apple tech talks London (cheers for the free lunch and free beers)
Well, to those mommy's boy never pay taxes and bitch about standard and over priced product. Moved along, nothing for the like of you here.
To those who are interested. Just from what I read between the lines - the term "the most forward thinking" is an extremely understatement. from a pure software POV to see their road map. Boy, I have to say, we have just caught a glimpse of what Apple want to do in the next 10 years. Developers know what I am talking about
Yes. All Exynos SoCs to date use CPU designs from ARMH and GPU designs from ARMH or ImgTec. Samsung does indeed have great SoC designers, but a custom design will be a whole new level for them. They appear to have plans to do a custom ARM CPU, but it would be 2015 before you see that. For 2014, if they can fit a Cortex-A57 into a smartphone TDP, they'll likely do that. Otherwise they stretch a Krait (Snapdragon 805) or a Cortex-A15. Their Exynos 5250, 5410, 5420 adventure with Cortex-A15 and big.LITTLE hasn't been the smoothest roll out, so hopefully, they learned and will do better in 2014.
Apple and Qualcomm currently get the benefit of the doubt because they have already shipped 2 custom CPU cores. There's even speculation that a custom GPU is next for Apple. Nvidia? Not a lot of wins there.
Edit: Forgot to say that MediaTek is a big player too. They could surprise.
Edit 2: Forgot that AMD is also looking to produce a 64-bit ARM SoC. Probably 2014. Who knows with them.
Is this really true? Windows compatibility is likely huge for things like enterprise desktops (where specific applications have been design to help the business run), but in the tablet space, we're talking consumer usage and office automation usage , right? In that space, those usages are becoming more and more web-based and office automation is becoming more and more commoditized.
Microsoft's problems in tablets aren't really x86 SoC or legacy app related. I still think overall Surface hardware wasn't that great (a year late and bulky), the live tile UI wasn't that great (too cold and foreign for Windows users), and MS didn't really commit to making what they have great.
Intel's problem is that they just aren't that interested. They don't view $20 ARM SoCs as life threatening or mobiles as threatening their business yet.
Don't get me wrong, I do share the same feelings of yours.
There is failed Windows tablet attempts for more than 15 years now, but the dream of having a full Windows on a mobile device is a hard one to kill in people imagination. To my understanding the reason why all Windows tablet are still a market failure come from the fact that none are better than a conventional laptop at the same price point, and legacy UI or apps cannot be used without a keyboard and mouse which neglect the tablet form factor attributs. The sadly truth is nothing can replace the keyboard and mouse input efficiency in legacy apps, and having a mandatory keyboard and mouse on a tablet is a worse compromise.
Intel and Microsoft has big interested into protecting their interdependent IPs. In the past, most enterprise and home users had a WinTel computers, since few years ago things started to change and while most people still got a PC at home, most of them sees better value to keep their aging PC and got a new tablet instead. Microsoft already lose his monopole of the web browsing machines, their OS and Office suite will follow soon enough. And without windows nobody will depend on x86 architecture anymore.
All this talk about Samsung looking at Apple's blueprints and processors...
Samsung also makes their OWN processors... Samsung has their OWN engineers.
Doesn't anyone at Samsung know how to move to 64-bit? Does Samsung really have to look at someone else?
Their most powerful phone out at the moment is the Note, which still doesn't have a need for (and wouldn't benefit much) from 64-bit architecture.
The big 'knob' is memory. Anything over 4 gig and you absolutely need a 64-bit architecture or you are going to need two clock cycles for one memory address. Since the Note has 3 gig, 32-bits are just fine, and it beats the 64-bit iPhone in quite a few performance metrics while the iPhone certainly returns the favor and clobbers the Note in other benchmarks. Both are amazingly zippy devices.
I think where a lot of people went wrong on the iPhone is saying that because the iPhone doesn't have 4 gig of memory, it doesn't need a 64-bit bus. If you go over 4 gig, yes, you absolutely need a 64-bit bus (and Samsung will likely go there once it needs to), but just because you only have one gig doesn't mean you can't benefit. Just use the lower 32 bits for memory access and you can still use the remaining 32 bits for other things. Op-codes, feeding registers, whatever. How optimized the iPhone is to do that I don't really know, but it certainly remains well positioned for future growth.
And when Apple hands over the masks for laying out the transistors and metal layers on the wafer, what is the Samsung fab engineer seeing? They aren't seeing a blueprint. It's doubtful to me that Apple is handing over the circuit design or "blueprint" for the SoC. They are handing over circuit masks to etch the transistors. Apple and Samsung work to make sure the masks are designed correctly for the process involved, but I doubt that Samsung Semi knows at any point time what those masks are building.
Samsung would have to steal a wafer and put it under a microscope. Basically the same thing Chipworks did. This is not some day at the park type of activity. It would be act of espionage. Not worth the cost for what you can figure out based on images of the product.
You do realize that there are companies that specialize in reverse engineering a chip just by getting a sample of one? They can take the physical chip and by removing layers and imaging the chip they can actually construct a schematic diagram of all the transistors. I went back to Chipworks and found their capabilities are far beyond what I thought. This is exactly what they are capable of doing.
When Chipworks looked at the A7 it was more of a publicity stunt. They image the chip to get a basic view of the major components, but stop there. They have the ability to reverse engineer a processor and produce a schematic from it. Of course, they're not going to invest the huge $$$ it would take to completely reverse engineer a processor like the A7 "just for kicks". Simply providing the basic images brings a lot of attention to what they do and what their capabilities are.
Why would someone want to reverse engineer a competitors processor? It's not so they can copy. One use is to spot any possible infringement of your own IP in their designs. Another would be to "snoop around" and see where they are at in terms of their technology & expertise in comparison to your own.
I guarantee you Intel, TSMC, Samsung and other large fabs would have this capability. But why would Samsung need to reverse engineer an A7 when they basically have the schematic already (or an ability to create one from the mask)? If you have a schematic then you know pretty much all you need to determine if it's a 64 bit chip or not.
I think it's impossible that Samsung didn't know the A7 was 64 bit. I think the only thing they were in the dark about is the release schedule and iOS 7 already being coded for 64 bit.
Have you ever seen the 5 inch Dell Streak phablet? There is a limit for how big a mobile phone could be before losing it's mobility usefulness, I'll be embarrassed to use one of those overgrown size phone in public, I don't want to show off my phone in public, I wanted it has discreet as possible.
I like the look of the Galaxy S4 - and the size of the screen
- just not sure I want to jump ship to the world of Android!
But how? I'm still cloudy on how they would know a chip is 32 or 64-bit. We're not talking about a node change which is something that needs to be performed at the fabrication level and is completely up to Samsung but an instruction set of a chip. What about Chipwork's images say "This is 64-bit"? Samsung would know that Apple included 4MB of RAM on the chip and other physical features but I don't see how Samsung would know it's 64-bit just by looking at it.
if they really did know all about this chip itt really makes that part of Samsung uncharacteristically tightlipped and ethical when they could have leaked the news and let Samsung make an announcement when Apple starts ramping up production before the iPhone 5S was announced.
It would be pretty implausible for Samsung not to know the A7 was 64-bit. A big part of device manufacturing is an insane amount of QC and rigid specs on just about every film property imaginable. Film stress, refractive index, particles.... name it. Wafers are continually under SEMs, FIBs, and TEMs which will easily show you anything you want to know about a device.
Prior posts about there being 'over a billion transistors on a chip, no way they'd find 64 bits!' are a little laughable. First of all a transistor pretty much has 3 IO's, (source, gate and drain) so it would be a pretty poor place to look in the first place. All they'd have to do is look at one register and.... hey look, there's 64 lines going in instead of 32...... Done.
I don't believe your scenario of Apple surprisingly quickly flipping a pilot line into production is likely either. These things take a ton of very specific capital equipment that takes an incredible amount of resources to set up (both in time and money). If all they had was a pilot line and Apple said 'Ha! Start making millions of these! Samsung would probably realistically say, "We can get ramped for that kind of volume in 6-8 months if *everything* goes well" and even that is unrealistically optimistic.
I also find your suggestion that Samsung was, for once, being 'ethical' pretty unlikely too. Ha ha.
I think they just plain didn't think it was all that noteworthy. PC's have been 64 bit for years, they just didn't go there until they needed to. Samsung was probably like 'Hey look, this thing is 64 bit, what on earth do they need that for at this stage of the game?'
There was no surprise shown even during the manufacturing process- the surprise came after it was released and in consumers hands and Apple brilliantly proclaimed "We are the first to amazing 64-bit!" And the crowd goes wild!! And the non-Apple crowd made it even worse by saying 'they really don't need this yet' and kind of scratching their bums in general. Too late. Its already a lot like the articles reference to Spinal Tap. Apple built an amplifier that goes all the way up to 11!!! Now everyone wants an Amp that goes all the way up to 11! If you are in the Amp business, your next Amp *better* go up to 11 whether you think its needed or not.
64 bit is certainly not far away from being needed and Apple is well poised to continue to improve performance accordingly, but so will the competition. Who is right, who is wrong? Obviously on an Apple fansite I'm guessing what most peoples answer is, but with the 'amazing breakthough of 64-bit' is Apples latest offering 2x as fast as Samsung's latest offering? Nope. Okay, 50% faster? Nope. 25% Nope. C'mon! 10%??? Nope. Faster at all?? On some tests, yes, on others, no. Does that make Samsung amazing because they can build 32-bit devices that are as fast as Apple's 64-bit devices? Nope.
I just hope they both keep on trying to outdo each other
[quote name="Frood" url="/t/161207/apples-64-bit-a7-soc-set-off-panic-for-chipmakers/120#post_2447379"] It would be pretty implausible for Samsung not to know the A7 was 64-bit. A big part of device manufacturing is an insane amount of QC and rigid specs on just about every film property imaginable. Film stress, refractive index, particles.... name it. Wafers are continually under SEMs, FIBs, and TEMs which will easily show you anything you want to know about a device.[/QUOTE]
Anything you want to know? Does Foxconn know everything about the iPhone simply because they build it? Why can't Apple's contract with Samsung allow them to use their people to deal with any verification? I've seen it before in other industries in order to limit and compartmentalize what manufactures can see.
[QUOTE]Prior posts about there being 'over a billion transistors on a chip, no way they'd find 64 bits!' are a little laughable. First of all a transistor pretty much has 3 IO's, (source, gate and drain) so it would be a pretty poor place to look in the first place. All they'd have to do is look at one register and.... hey look, there's 64 lines going in instead of 32...... Done.[/QUOTE]
That goes against what Mike Ash stated. I'll repeat again, "With ARM64, there are 32 integer registers" and "32-bit ARM are […] 32 32-bit floating point registers […] ARM64 simplifies this to 32 128-bit registers.'
[QUOTE]I don't believe your scenario of Apple surprisingly quickly flipping a pilot line into production is likely either. These things take a ton of very specific capital equipment that takes an incredible amount of resources to set up (both in time and money). If all they had was a pilot line and Apple said 'Ha! Start making millions of these! Samsung would probably realistically say, "We can get ramped for that kind of volume in 6-8 months if *everything* goes well" and even that is unrealistically optimistic.[/QUOTE]
Huh? Where did I say that? And why does it take a ton of specific capital that would scream it's a 64-bit chip? We're not talking about a smaller node here.
[QUOTE]I also find your suggestion that Samsung was, for once, being 'ethical' pretty unlikely too. Ha ha. I think they just plain didn't think it was all that noteworthy. PC's have been 64 bit for years, they just didn't go there until they needed to. Samsung was probably like 'Hey look, this thing is 64 bit, what on earth do they need that for at this stage of the game?'[/QUOTE]
I find it implausible that it would neither be noteworthy (we're noting it now and it's been talked about since it was announced) and that no one at Samsung would see how this would affect their mobile devices or feel there was anything to be gained from usurping Apple by simply saying, "Hey, the S5 will be 64-bit." This is a company that doped their mobile processors for a 4% gain in performance when certain benchmarks were run.
As I stated to Eric, I am not discounting any possibility but I also haven't read any argument on AI that 1) is convincing to show Samsung would have to know by simply having it's plant utilized regardless of how much control Apple had over the production, and 2) that if they did know they would think it's business worthy to do the same (until after Apple announces it).
Is this really true? Windows compatibility is likely huge for things like enterprise desktops (where specific applications have been design to help the business run), but in the tablet space, we're talking consumer usage and office automation usage right? In that space, those usages are becoming more and more web-based and office automation is becoming more and more commoditized.
There is an asston of enterprise apps that isn't web-based yet. Enterprise buys tablets as well and there's a certain usefulness if you could have both in one thing instead of having to carry your laptop as well as an iPad.
Apple is moving in this direction by making iOS a lot more capable. Microsoft is trying to move in this direction by making Windows suck less on a tablet and IMHO floundering at it this go around.
Still, I'd love an 11" MBA that could become a tablet as needed...
You do realize that there are companies that specialize in reverse engineering a chip just by getting a sample of one? They can take the physical chip and by removing layers and imaging the chip they can actually construct a schematic diagram of all the transistors. I went back to Chipworks and found their capabilities are far beyond what I thought. This is exactly what they are capable of doing.
When Chipworks looked at the A7 it was more of a publicity stunt. They image the chip to get a basic view of the major components, but stop there. They have the ability to reverse engineer a processor and produce a schematic from it. Of course, they're not going to invest the huge $$$ it would take to completely reverse engineer a processor like the A7 "just for kicks". Simply providing the basic images brings a lot of attention to what they do and what their capabilities are.
Why would someone want to reverse engineer a competitors processor? It's not so they can copy. One use is to spot any possible infringement of your own IP in their designs. Another would be to "snoop around" and see where they are at in terms of their technology & expertise in comparison to your own.
I guarantee you Intel, TSMC, Samsung and other large fabs would have this capability. But why would Samsung need to reverse engineer an A7 when they basically have the schematic already (or an ability to create one from the mask)? If you have a schematic then you know pretty much all you need to determine if it's a 64 bit chip or not.
I think it's impossible that Samsung didn't know the A7 was 64 bit. I think the only thing they were in the dark about is the release schedule and iOS 7 already being coded for 64 bit.
Really don't agree with you that Samsung has any schematics or blueprints that give them any information. When Apple is working with Samsung Semi, Apple's SoC designers are figuring out how to fab the chip, to etch the transistors. Samsung Semi simply had no architecture information to glean from this type of work.
If you are playing the espionage angle, then that automatically means Samsung design know anything about the architecture. They are only doing it for "intelligence" purposes and any kind of information gleaned from it automatically means they are a year late. There are also legal risks incumbent in it.
Their most powerful phone out at the moment is the Note, which still doesn't have a need for (and wouldn't benefit much) from 64-bit architecture.
The big 'knob' is memory. Anything over 4 gig and you absolutely need a 64-bit architecture or you are going to need two clock cycles for one memory address. Since the Note has 3 gig, 32-bits are just fine, and it beats the 64-bit iPhone in quite a few performance metrics while the iPhone certainly returns the favor and clobbers the Note in other benchmarks. Both are amazingly zippy devices.
I think where a lot of people went wrong on the iPhone is saying that because the iPhone doesn't have 4 gig of memory, it doesn't need a 64-bit bus. If you go over 4 gig, yes, you absolutely need a 64-bit bus (and Samsung will likely go there once it needs to), but just because you only have one gig doesn't mean you can't benefit. Just use the lower 32 bits for memory access and you can still use the remaining 32 bits for other things. Op-codes, feeding registers, whatever. How optimized the iPhone is to do that I don't really know, but it certainly remains well positioned for future growth.
The only performance metric the Note 3 beats the iPhone 5S in is multi-core benchmarks and some GPU benchmarks, and barely at that. Meanwhile, the iPhone 5S's single threaded performance is about 40 to 50% faster. Single threaded performance lifts all boats. There are very few applications that can actually use 4-cores, and even less so on smartphones.
And maybe you shouldn't use the word "bus" in the context of 64-bit either. Apple's SoC have used 32, 64 and 128-bit busses already. Register would be the more appropriate word.
Really don't agree with you that Samsung has any schematics or blueprints that give them any information. When Apple is working with Samsung Semi, Apple's SoC designers are figuring out how to fab the chip, to etch the transistors. Samsung Semi simply had no architecture information to glean from this type of work.
If you are playing the espionage angle, then that automatically means Samsung design know anything about the architecture. They are only doing it for "intelligence" purposes and any kind of information gleaned from it automatically means they are a year late. There are also legal risks incumbent in it.
There are both in-house mask shops from the foundries and 3rd part merchant mask shops. (Wikipedia list ~15 merchant shops for 65 nm lithography alone from a 2006 survey.) There's a sub-industry for basically every step in the foundry business, from the silicon ingots, the tooling, to the ceramic packaging. One stop factories where the silicon and semiconductor materials go in and a packaged chip in a box comes out don't really exist anymore. They probably never really existed in the first place.
This is basically secret and patented information, Apple is going to control it, and control any sample hardware or pilot production hardware. Every single mask will be controlled and tracked. Every single wafer that's etched for Apple will be tracked. No system is perfect, and things do get lost, and people can steal things, but the perspective is totally different from it'll be really easy for Samsung to find out.
If it was easy to find out at the foundry, the information would have leaked in 2012 when samples were produced was occurring. There was no rumor for it until August of 2013 (from 9to5mac). A rumor that late meant the "64-bit" rumor was leaked somewhere not in the production chain. It may have been from benchmarking leaks or software leaks. I doubt that 9to5mac rumor leaked from the foundry.
There are both in-house mask shops from the foundries and 3rd part merchant mask shops. (Wikipedia list ~15 merchant shops for 65 nm lithography alone from a 2006 survey.) There's a sub-industry for basically every step in the foundry business, from the silicon ingots, the tooling, to the ceramic packaging. One stop factories where the silicon and semiconductor materials go in and a packaged chip in a box comes out don't really exist anymore. They probably never really existed in the first place.
This is basically secret and patented information, Apple is going to control it, and control any sample hardware or pilot production hardware. Every single mask will be controlled and tracked. Every single wafer that's etched for Apple will be tracked. No system is perfect, and things do get lost, and people can steal things, but the perspective is totally different from it'll be really easy for Samsung to find out.
If it was easy to find out at the foundry, the information would have leaked in 2012 when samples were produced was occurring. There was no rumor for it until August of 2013 (from 9to5mac). A rumor that late meant the "64-bit" rumor was leaked somewhere not in the production chain. It may have been from benchmarking leaks or software leaks. I doubt that 9to5mac rumor leaked from the foundry.
OK. How are the finished dies tested to ensure it actually works to spec before they are packaged?
OK. How do they test the finished dies to ensure it actually works to spec?
I don't know the process to this level of detail. I barely know this semiconductor stuff as it is. However, I do know how products and information can be controlled and tracked. Odds are pretty damn good that Apple's control and tracking are a lot more stringent than what I've experienced before.
I imagine that they cut the chips out of the wafer, package them, power them up, and put it through a series of tests to verify its performance. At the the point of packaging, it may even be out of Samsung's hands, and it's a merchant packaging company doing the work (packaging is the ceramic substrate and soldering points or pins that you often see as a "chip"). After that, they'd be boxed up and sent to Foxconn or whoever is assembling the PCB.
Or consider the new patent Apple filed for a laser projector display device %u2013 the experiences that a 64-bit chip affords to Apple spans all of their mini-devices. Not only does Apple skate to where the puck will be, but it's "their" own puck, which in this case seems to be ahead of everyone else's puck to begin with.
Or consider the new patent Apple filed for a laser projector display device %u2013 the experiences that a 64-bit chip affords to Apple spans all of their mini-devices. Not only does Apple skate to where the puck will be, but it's "their" own puck, which in this case seems to be ahead of everyone else's puck to begin with.
Theres this thing called Glasses. They help with vision. You may want to research it and come back to us in a week. While you are at it buy a Nexus7 and report back to us.
I would say that after the revelations in the 2010 court case of possible leaks between various divisions of Samsung, that behind the scenes Apple came down hard on Samsung and tightened security significantly.
There were probably very few people outside Apple who knew what the chips were capable of.
This was while Apple was publicly looking for new chip foundries to supply them with chips.
Samsung aren't stupid, Apple is a major customer, they would bend over backwards to keep them.
What people don't understand is a chip fab is like an outsource printer. (Really over simplifying here) They really don't look at what they are printing they just output the files the customer gives them and check the registration. In this case the checksums. So there is also a very good chance that Samsung was not even aware that it was 64-bit or at the very least not true 64-bit. With all the different subsystems on the new SOC designs you can't really look at a chip and determine what everything is anymore.
Comments
Well, to those mommy's boy never pay taxes and bitch about standard and over priced product. Moved along, nothing for the like of you here.
To those who are interested. Just from what I read between the lines - the term "the most forward thinking" is an extremely understatement. from a pure software POV to see their road map. Boy, I have to say, we have just caught a glimpse of what Apple want to do in the next 10 years. Developers know what I am talking about
Thank you! That explains it well.
Quote:
Is this really true? Windows compatibility is likely huge for things like enterprise desktops (where specific applications have been design to help the business run), but in the tablet space, we're talking consumer usage and office automation usage , right? In that space, those usages are becoming more and more web-based and office automation is becoming more and more commoditized.
Microsoft's problems in tablets aren't really x86 SoC or legacy app related. I still think overall Surface hardware wasn't that great (a year late and bulky), the live tile UI wasn't that great (too cold and foreign for Windows users), and MS didn't really commit to making what they have great.
Intel's problem is that they just aren't that interested. They don't view $20 ARM SoCs as life threatening or mobiles as threatening their business yet.
Don't get me wrong, I do share the same feelings of yours.
There is failed Windows tablet attempts for more than 15 years now, but the dream of having a full Windows on a mobile device is a hard one to kill in people imagination. To my understanding the reason why all Windows tablet are still a market failure come from the fact that none are better than a conventional laptop at the same price point, and legacy UI or apps cannot be used without a keyboard and mouse which neglect the tablet form factor attributs. The sadly truth is nothing can replace the keyboard and mouse input efficiency in legacy apps, and having a mandatory keyboard and mouse on a tablet is a worse compromise.
Intel and Microsoft has big interested into protecting their interdependent IPs. In the past, most enterprise and home users had a WinTel computers, since few years ago things started to change and while most people still got a PC at home, most of them sees better value to keep their aging PC and got a new tablet instead. Microsoft already lose his monopole of the web browsing machines, their OS and Office suite will follow soon enough. And without windows nobody will depend on x86 architecture anymore.
All this talk about Samsung looking at Apple's blueprints and processors...
Samsung also makes their OWN processors... Samsung has their OWN engineers.
Doesn't anyone at Samsung know how to move to 64-bit? Does Samsung really have to look at someone else?
Their most powerful phone out at the moment is the Note, which still doesn't have a need for (and wouldn't benefit much) from 64-bit architecture.
The big 'knob' is memory. Anything over 4 gig and you absolutely need a 64-bit architecture or you are going to need two clock cycles for one memory address. Since the Note has 3 gig, 32-bits are just fine, and it beats the 64-bit iPhone in quite a few performance metrics while the iPhone certainly returns the favor and clobbers the Note in other benchmarks. Both are amazingly zippy devices.
I think where a lot of people went wrong on the iPhone is saying that because the iPhone doesn't have 4 gig of memory, it doesn't need a 64-bit bus. If you go over 4 gig, yes, you absolutely need a 64-bit bus (and Samsung will likely go there once it needs to), but just because you only have one gig doesn't mean you can't benefit. Just use the lower 32 bits for memory access and you can still use the remaining 32 bits for other things. Op-codes, feeding registers, whatever. How optimized the iPhone is to do that I don't really know, but it certainly remains well positioned for future growth.
And when Apple hands over the masks for laying out the transistors and metal layers on the wafer, what is the Samsung fab engineer seeing? They aren't seeing a blueprint. It's doubtful to me that Apple is handing over the circuit design or "blueprint" for the SoC. They are handing over circuit masks to etch the transistors. Apple and Samsung work to make sure the masks are designed correctly for the process involved, but I doubt that Samsung Semi knows at any point time what those masks are building.
Samsung would have to steal a wafer and put it under a microscope. Basically the same thing Chipworks did. This is not some day at the park type of activity. It would be act of espionage. Not worth the cost for what you can figure out based on images of the product.
You do realize that there are companies that specialize in reverse engineering a chip just by getting a sample of one? They can take the physical chip and by removing layers and imaging the chip they can actually construct a schematic diagram of all the transistors. I went back to Chipworks and found their capabilities are far beyond what I thought. This is exactly what they are capable of doing.
When Chipworks looked at the A7 it was more of a publicity stunt. They image the chip to get a basic view of the major components, but stop there. They have the ability to reverse engineer a processor and produce a schematic from it. Of course, they're not going to invest the huge $$$ it would take to completely reverse engineer a processor like the A7 "just for kicks". Simply providing the basic images brings a lot of attention to what they do and what their capabilities are.
Why would someone want to reverse engineer a competitors processor? It's not so they can copy. One use is to spot any possible infringement of your own IP in their designs. Another would be to "snoop around" and see where they are at in terms of their technology & expertise in comparison to your own.
I guarantee you Intel, TSMC, Samsung and other large fabs would have this capability. But why would Samsung need to reverse engineer an A7 when they basically have the schematic already (or an ability to create one from the mask)? If you have a schematic then you know pretty much all you need to determine if it's a 64 bit chip or not.
I think it's impossible that Samsung didn't know the A7 was 64 bit. I think the only thing they were in the dark about is the release schedule and iOS 7 already being coded for 64 bit.
Have you ever seen the 5 inch Dell Streak phablet? There is a limit for how big a mobile phone could be before losing it's mobility usefulness, I'll be embarrassed to use one of those overgrown size phone in public, I don't want to show off my phone in public, I wanted it has discreet as possible.
I like the look of the Galaxy S4 - and the size of the screen
- just not sure I want to jump ship to the world of Android!
But how? I'm still cloudy on how they would know a chip is 32 or 64-bit. We're not talking about a node change which is something that needs to be performed at the fabrication level and is completely up to Samsung but an instruction set of a chip. What about Chipwork's images say "This is 64-bit"? Samsung would know that Apple included 4MB of RAM on the chip and other physical features but I don't see how Samsung would know it's 64-bit just by looking at it.
if they really did know all about this chip itt really makes that part of Samsung uncharacteristically tightlipped and ethical when they could have leaked the news and let Samsung make an announcement when Apple starts ramping up production before the iPhone 5S was announced.
It would be pretty implausible for Samsung not to know the A7 was 64-bit. A big part of device manufacturing is an insane amount of QC and rigid specs on just about every film property imaginable. Film stress, refractive index, particles.... name it. Wafers are continually under SEMs, FIBs, and TEMs which will easily show you anything you want to know about a device.
Prior posts about there being 'over a billion transistors on a chip, no way they'd find 64 bits!' are a little laughable. First of all a transistor pretty much has 3 IO's, (source, gate and drain) so it would be a pretty poor place to look in the first place. All they'd have to do is look at one register and.... hey look, there's 64 lines going in instead of 32...... Done.
I don't believe your scenario of Apple surprisingly quickly flipping a pilot line into production is likely either. These things take a ton of very specific capital equipment that takes an incredible amount of resources to set up (both in time and money). If all they had was a pilot line and Apple said 'Ha! Start making millions of these! Samsung would probably realistically say, "We can get ramped for that kind of volume in 6-8 months if *everything* goes well" and even that is unrealistically optimistic.
I also find your suggestion that Samsung was, for once, being 'ethical' pretty unlikely too. Ha ha.
I think they just plain didn't think it was all that noteworthy. PC's have been 64 bit for years, they just didn't go there until they needed to. Samsung was probably like 'Hey look, this thing is 64 bit, what on earth do they need that for at this stage of the game?'
There was no surprise shown even during the manufacturing process- the surprise came after it was released and in consumers hands and Apple brilliantly proclaimed "We are the first to amazing 64-bit!" And the crowd goes wild!! And the non-Apple crowd made it even worse by saying 'they really don't need this yet' and kind of scratching their bums in general. Too late. Its already a lot like the articles reference to Spinal Tap. Apple built an amplifier that goes all the way up to 11!!! Now everyone wants an Amp that goes all the way up to 11! If you are in the Amp business, your next Amp *better* go up to 11 whether you think its needed or not.
64 bit is certainly not far away from being needed and Apple is well poised to continue to improve performance accordingly, but so will the competition. Who is right, who is wrong? Obviously on an Apple fansite I'm guessing what most peoples answer is, but with the 'amazing breakthough of 64-bit' is Apples latest offering 2x as fast as Samsung's latest offering? Nope. Okay, 50% faster? Nope. 25% Nope. C'mon! 10%??? Nope. Faster at all?? On some tests, yes, on others, no. Does that make Samsung amazing because they can build 32-bit devices that are as fast as Apple's 64-bit devices? Nope.
I just hope they both keep on trying to outdo each other
It would be pretty implausible for Samsung not to know the A7 was 64-bit. A big part of device manufacturing is an insane amount of QC and rigid specs on just about every film property imaginable. Film stress, refractive index, particles.... name it. Wafers are continually under SEMs, FIBs, and TEMs which will easily show you anything you want to know about a device.[/QUOTE]
Anything you want to know? Does Foxconn know everything about the iPhone simply because they build it? Why can't Apple's contract with Samsung allow them to use their people to deal with any verification? I've seen it before in other industries in order to limit and compartmentalize what manufactures can see.
[QUOTE]Prior posts about there being 'over a billion transistors on a chip, no way they'd find 64 bits!' are a little laughable. First of all a transistor pretty much has 3 IO's, (source, gate and drain) so it would be a pretty poor place to look in the first place. All they'd have to do is look at one register and.... hey look, there's 64 lines going in instead of 32...... Done.[/QUOTE]
That goes against what Mike Ash stated. I'll repeat again, "With ARM64, there are 32 integer registers" and "32-bit ARM are […] 32 32-bit floating point registers […] ARM64 simplifies this to 32 128-bit registers.'
[QUOTE]I don't believe your scenario of Apple surprisingly quickly flipping a pilot line into production is likely either. These things take a ton of very specific capital equipment that takes an incredible amount of resources to set up (both in time and money). If all they had was a pilot line and Apple said 'Ha! Start making millions of these! Samsung would probably realistically say, "We can get ramped for that kind of volume in 6-8 months if *everything* goes well" and even that is unrealistically optimistic.[/QUOTE]
Huh? Where did I say that? And why does it take a ton of specific capital that would scream it's a 64-bit chip? We're not talking about a smaller node here.
[QUOTE]I also find your suggestion that Samsung was, for once, being 'ethical' pretty unlikely too. Ha ha.
I think they just plain didn't think it was all that noteworthy. PC's have been 64 bit for years, they just didn't go there until they needed to. Samsung was probably like 'Hey look, this thing is 64 bit, what on earth do they need that for at this stage of the game?'[/QUOTE]
I find it implausible that it would neither be noteworthy (we're noting it now and it's been talked about since it was announced) and that no one at Samsung would see how this would affect their mobile devices or feel there was anything to be gained from usurping Apple by simply saying, "Hey, the S5 will be 64-bit." This is a company that doped their mobile processors for a 4% gain in performance when certain benchmarks were run.
As I stated to Eric, I am not discounting any possibility but I also haven't read any argument on AI that 1) is convincing to show Samsung would have to know by simply having it's plant utilized regardless of how much control Apple had over the production, and 2) that if they did know they would think it's business worthy to do the same (until after Apple announces it).
Is this really true? Windows compatibility is likely huge for things like enterprise desktops (where specific applications have been design to help the business run), but in the tablet space, we're talking consumer usage and office automation usage right? In that space, those usages are becoming more and more web-based and office automation is becoming more and more commoditized.
There is an asston of enterprise apps that isn't web-based yet. Enterprise buys tablets as well and there's a certain usefulness if you could have both in one thing instead of having to carry your laptop as well as an iPad.
Apple is moving in this direction by making iOS a lot more capable. Microsoft is trying to move in this direction by making Windows suck less on a tablet and IMHO floundering at it this go around.
Still, I'd love an 11" MBA that could become a tablet as needed...
You do realize that there are companies that specialize in reverse engineering a chip just by getting a sample of one? They can take the physical chip and by removing layers and imaging the chip they can actually construct a schematic diagram of all the transistors. I went back to Chipworks and found their capabilities are far beyond what I thought. This is exactly what they are capable of doing.
When Chipworks looked at the A7 it was more of a publicity stunt. They image the chip to get a basic view of the major components, but stop there. They have the ability to reverse engineer a processor and produce a schematic from it. Of course, they're not going to invest the huge $$$ it would take to completely reverse engineer a processor like the A7 "just for kicks". Simply providing the basic images brings a lot of attention to what they do and what their capabilities are.
Why would someone want to reverse engineer a competitors processor? It's not so they can copy. One use is to spot any possible infringement of your own IP in their designs. Another would be to "snoop around" and see where they are at in terms of their technology & expertise in comparison to your own.
I guarantee you Intel, TSMC, Samsung and other large fabs would have this capability. But why would Samsung need to reverse engineer an A7 when they basically have the schematic already (or an ability to create one from the mask)? If you have a schematic then you know pretty much all you need to determine if it's a 64 bit chip or not.
I think it's impossible that Samsung didn't know the A7 was 64 bit. I think the only thing they were in the dark about is the release schedule and iOS 7 already being coded for 64 bit.
Really don't agree with you that Samsung has any schematics or blueprints that give them any information. When Apple is working with Samsung Semi, Apple's SoC designers are figuring out how to fab the chip, to etch the transistors. Samsung Semi simply had no architecture information to glean from this type of work.
If you are playing the espionage angle, then that automatically means Samsung design know anything about the architecture. They are only doing it for "intelligence" purposes and any kind of information gleaned from it automatically means they are a year late. There are also legal risks incumbent in it.
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[*] http://www.anandtech.com/show/7591/answered-by-the-experts-arms-cortex-a53-lead-architect-peter-greenhalgh
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I won't pretend that I understood any of the heavy questions and answers.
Their most powerful phone out at the moment is the Note, which still doesn't have a need for (and wouldn't benefit much) from 64-bit architecture.
The big 'knob' is memory. Anything over 4 gig and you absolutely need a 64-bit architecture or you are going to need two clock cycles for one memory address. Since the Note has 3 gig, 32-bits are just fine, and it beats the 64-bit iPhone in quite a few performance metrics while the iPhone certainly returns the favor and clobbers the Note in other benchmarks. Both are amazingly zippy devices.
I think where a lot of people went wrong on the iPhone is saying that because the iPhone doesn't have 4 gig of memory, it doesn't need a 64-bit bus. If you go over 4 gig, yes, you absolutely need a 64-bit bus (and Samsung will likely go there once it needs to), but just because you only have one gig doesn't mean you can't benefit. Just use the lower 32 bits for memory access and you can still use the remaining 32 bits for other things. Op-codes, feeding registers, whatever. How optimized the iPhone is to do that I don't really know, but it certainly remains well positioned for future growth.
The only performance metric the Note 3 beats the iPhone 5S in is multi-core benchmarks and some GPU benchmarks, and barely at that. Meanwhile, the iPhone 5S's single threaded performance is about 40 to 50% faster. Single threaded performance lifts all boats. There are very few applications that can actually use 4-cores, and even less so on smartphones.
And maybe you shouldn't use the word "bus" in the context of 64-bit either. Apple's SoC have used 32, 64 and 128-bit busses already. Register would be the more appropriate word.
Who manufactures the masks?
Who manufactures the masks?
There are both in-house mask shops from the foundries and 3rd part merchant mask shops. (Wikipedia list ~15 merchant shops for 65 nm lithography alone from a 2006 survey.) There's a sub-industry for basically every step in the foundry business, from the silicon ingots, the tooling, to the ceramic packaging. One stop factories where the silicon and semiconductor materials go in and a packaged chip in a box comes out don't really exist anymore. They probably never really existed in the first place.
This is basically secret and patented information, Apple is going to control it, and control any sample hardware or pilot production hardware. Every single mask will be controlled and tracked. Every single wafer that's etched for Apple will be tracked. No system is perfect, and things do get lost, and people can steal things, but the perspective is totally different from it'll be really easy for Samsung to find out.
If it was easy to find out at the foundry, the information would have leaked in 2012 when samples were produced was occurring. There was no rumor for it until August of 2013 (from 9to5mac). A rumor that late meant the "64-bit" rumor was leaked somewhere not in the production chain. It may have been from benchmarking leaks or software leaks. I doubt that 9to5mac rumor leaked from the foundry.
OK. How are the finished dies tested to ensure it actually works to spec before they are packaged?
OK. How do they test the finished dies to ensure it actually works to spec?
I don't know the process to this level of detail. I barely know this semiconductor stuff as it is. However, I do know how products and information can be controlled and tracked. Odds are pretty damn good that Apple's control and tracking are a lot more stringent than what I've experienced before.
I imagine that they cut the chips out of the wafer, package them, power them up, and put it through a series of tests to verify its performance. At the the point of packaging, it may even be out of Samsung's hands, and it's a merchant packaging company doing the work (packaging is the ceramic substrate and soldering points or pins that you often see as a "chip"). After that, they'd be boxed up and sent to Foxconn or whoever is assembling the PCB.
http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/17/google-project-glass-laser-projector-patent/
Theres this thing called Glasses. They help with vision. You may want to research it and come back to us in a week. While you are at it buy a Nexus7 and report back to us.
Would that be Google Glasses?
I would say that after the revelations in the 2010 court case of possible leaks between various divisions of Samsung, that behind the scenes Apple came down hard on Samsung and tightened security significantly.
There were probably very few people outside Apple who knew what the chips were capable of.
This was while Apple was publicly looking for new chip foundries to supply them with chips.
Samsung aren't stupid, Apple is a major customer, they would bend over backwards to keep them.
What people don't understand is a chip fab is like an outsource printer. (Really over simplifying here) They really don't look at what they are printing they just output the files the customer gives them and check the registration. In this case the checksums. So there is also a very good chance that Samsung was not even aware that it was 64-bit or at the very least not true 64-bit. With all the different subsystems on the new SOC designs you can't really look at a chip and determine what everything is anymore.