After its disastrous Exynos 5 Octa, Samsung may have lost Apple's A7 contract to TSMC

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  • Reply 21 of 391

    Is exynos really that bad? I know people were disappointed that it wasn't a true octa-core processor (basically 2 quad-core processors glued together), but it sounds good in theory. Lower power consumption when the slower processor "is good enough" and switches to the faster processor when the user would value speed over battery life. 

  • Reply 22 of 391
    gtrgtr Posts: 3,231member
    Did anybody else's brain burp after reading this article?

    My God, that was a good meal!

    Kudos to the author for researching, reviewing, and releasing such material rather than just regurgitating like many others have chosen to do.

    God, I wish there were more like you.
  • Reply 23 of 391
    ochyming wrote: »

    Indeed.
    Funny, a supposedly rumor/fanboy site doing better tech journalism than the mainstream newsCorporation.
    Look at the mess The BBC and CNN are drown in.

    I stopped watching/reading both BBC and CNN a couple of years ago. By idiots, for idiots.
  • Reply 24 of 391
    tooltalk wrote: »
    Samsung is doomed.  LOL!

    Yeah, you're going to have to find a new employer soon. LOL!
  • Reply 25 of 391
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member

    Another thing that allowed Apple to surprise everyone with 64-bit is OS X. It shares a core codebase with iOS, so they were able to test all their 64-bit code in the wild for years with no-one suspecting anything.

  • Reply 26 of 391
    [QUOTE]Samsung was simply blindsided by the 64-bit A7. How it could be so left in the dark while spending months gearing up manufacturing of Apple's A7 is an opaque mystery unless Samsung wasn't ever involved in building it in the first place.[/QUOTE]

    Isn't there an alternative explanation? That Samsung could not reveal that they knew about the 64 bit processor in advance? They likely promise Apple a firewall between components manufacturing and the rest of the business. So if they indeed knew, they had three choices:

    1. Mention 64 bit before Apple announced. That announcement coming out of the blue with no context would make no sense. It would put a big red flag in front of Apple and tell the rest of its customers that the firewall is a sham. There is a difference between suspecting a sham, and knowing it. The only reason to say anything pre-5S launch would be to tell the world it knew what processor was coming in the 5S. Bad idea with no upside.

    2. As played. Make their 64 bit lame announcement once the A7 was revealed. Sure it makes them look flat footed, but alternative 1 would do the same, with the added downside of adding to their unethical image. So now they are not content to copy and ship. They must pre-announce their intent to copy as part of their road map strategy.

    3. Shut up until they can ship. This one doesn't seem to be in the vocabulary of the grand copier.

    So regarding this one data point, is it not just as plausible that they knew about the A7 because they were building it, but were forced to keep quiet? After all, this is not the most sophisticated company in the world when it comes to the media.
  • Reply 27 of 391
    crowleycrowley Posts: 10,453member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



    There are lots of much more expensive smartphones than Apple's top of the line iPhone

     

    Are there?

  • Reply 28 of 391
    janbanan wrote: »
    Take note, tech "journalists". This is how you do tech journalism! The info is out there (google is your friend) once you are able to see behind the bullshit. It seems Daniel is one of the few people out there with the intellectual capacity and the guts to add the pieces of the puzzle, draw the logical conclusions and spell it out for the rest of us. Another brilliant analysis and piece of investigative journalism - bravo! I'm surprised nobody else commented on the poorly worded panicked statement from Samsung re 64-bit processors and rather jumped on the "phones don't need to address more than 4 GB memory" bandwagon (possibly a result of some quick-thinking Samsung PR people in the first place).

    Apple has done it again - a 32 to 64-bit transition literally overnight - seemingly effortless for developers and consumers alike. Forcing the whole industry forward when the rest were trotting down a blind alley at their own pace - this is true innovation!

    It's not really overnight because there are very few apps that will take advantage of the processor. It's a move that future proofs the 5s so it'll will be relevant in 2 years time when all the iPhones that Apple sells will have a 64 bit processor, and that's the genius part of it.
  • Reply 29 of 391
    crowley wrote: »
    Are there?

    1 or 2 but definitely not 'lots'.
  • Reply 30 of 391
    slurpyslurpy Posts: 5,382member
    Pieces like this (and not rehashed news or analyst bullshit) are the reason I come to this site. Amazing.
  • Reply 31 of 391
    lstream wrote: »
    Isn't there an alternative explanation? That Samsung could not reveal that they knew about the 64 bit processor in advance? They likely promise Apple a firewall between components manufacturing and the rest of the business. So if they indeed knew, they had three choices:

    1. Mention 64 bit before Apple announced. That announcement coming out of the blue with no context would make no sense. It would put a big red flag in front of Apple and tell the rest of its customers that the firewall is a sham. There is a difference between suspecting a sham, and knowing it. The only reason to say anything pre-5S launch would be to tell the world it knew what processor was coming in the 5S. Bad idea with no upside.

    2. As played. Make their 64 bit lame announcement once the A7 was revealed. Sure it makes them look flat footed, but alternative 1 would do the same, with the added downside of adding to their unethical image. So now they are not content to copy and ship. They must pre-announce their intent to copy as part of their road map strategy.

    3. Shut up until they can ship. This one doesn't seem to be in the vocabulary of the grand copier.

    So regarding this one data point, is it not just as plausible that they knew about the A7 because they were building it, but were forced to keep quiet? After all, this is not the most sophisticated company in the world when it comes to the media.

    Now if Apple could only get it's other suppliers not to leak anything.
  • Reply 32 of 391
    Thank you for this. For the last 2 months or so, AppleInsider has created insanely detailed and well-written articles about Apple. Compared to the rest of the garbage out there, articles like these are a breath of fresh air.

    Thanks AppleInsider.
  • Reply 33 of 391
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    Here's something that's slightly off topic, but worth pointing out:
    [quote]Apple's case for the iPhone 5S: $39
    For the 5C: $29
    Nokia's average selling price for feature phones: $34
    ? Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans)
    September 12, 2013 [/quote]

    Two things stand out:
    1. There's not that big a difference in costs between the 5S case and the 5C case. While I don't know where this person got his information, it sounds about right based on my manufacturing experience.

    2. It highlights the reason why Apple will never offer a phone that people consider to be 'cheap'. No way in the world that Apple's going to be able to compete in $30 phones.
  • Reply 34 of 391
    pokepoke Posts: 506member
    Maybe the rumour about Apple pursuing the A15 was actually due to disinformation being directed at Samsung. Apple knew that if Samsung thought they were working on an A15-based chip, then Samsung's next chip would be A15-based. They then quietly worked on the new 64 bit A7 with TSMC. Samsung went with bad technology because they thought it was part of Apple's roadmap. All Apple would really have to do is go to Samsung and say, "Hey, this is our reference design for our next CPU, we need to know if you can manufacture something like this... We'll just leave it here with you, whatever you do, don't copy it!"
  • Reply 35 of 391
    "...But what all this really highlights is that the tech media's Samsung-fed understanding that Apple is devoid of innovation .. while Samsung is both a brilliant innovator and an accomplished designer and manufacturer of components -- is all actually quite backward..."

    Brilliantly stated. This one line captures the basis of all the angst of Apple users over the past year.
  • Reply 36 of 391
    galbigalbi Posts: 968member
    64 Bit with only 1-2GB of RAM?

    That is like blowing a 10 gallon air compressor through a straw!
    Apple what the heck do you think you are doing?

    That is nothing more than marketing ploy to get people reinterested in the smartphone as we are already seeing saturation in the market place.
  • Reply 37 of 391

    Please appleinsider - stick to what you're good at and don't try to write technical articles as your knowledge level is embarrassingly low.

     

    From a process standpoint, the A7 is clearly using TSMC's 28nm process and packing 1 billion transistors onto a100mm2 die is not impressive *from a process standpoint*. It clearly is an impressive chip overall and it's new functionality is great.  However comparing it to pure-CPUs frankly demonstrates ignorance, as integrated GPUs blow up transistor counts and have higher density than CPUs. 

     

    At 28nm, assuming the A7 is approx 500 million transistors GPU and 500 million transistors non-gpu, the GPU portion would be about 40mm^2 and it would occupy about 40% of the total die. The non-gpu portion would be around 60mm^2 (50% more area per transistor, which sounds about right.) When apple moves to a 100mm^2 die on 20nm, it will have 1.4billion transistors or more.

     

    Frankly Intel is the only company with a clear process advantage as TSMC's upcoming 22nm process will still be behind Intel's now somewhat outdated 22nm node as they lack FinFETs and Intel is releasing products at 14nm.

     

    If you want great technical reviews - go to anandtech - right now they're one of the few places you can go to and really trust their reviews and editorials.

     

    Last note - I'm not sold on the big.LITTLE arch (as clearly Qualcomm is not). However with Samsung and other OEMs releasing devices that now have HMP, it'll be interesting purely from a technical exercise if it really does improve the race to idle as well as non-intensive power usage. Whether the overall BOM increase of $7.75 of the Exynos-powered S4 vs the Qualcomm-powered S4 makes a material difference it up for question (once you remove the extra battery and box contents of the international S4).

  • Reply 38 of 391
    This article is full of useful information and good reporting BUT you badly need and editor. The article's structure and tone are all over the place. You bury the most important bits in bad paragraph structure, awkward sentences and uneven rhythm.

    This should have been at least two articles, maybe three.

    Try this for starters: Have someone read your copy aloud. If they stumble, so will your reader.

    Again, all the parts of a solid article exist within here, but it needs work.
  • Reply 39 of 391
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    galbi wrote: »
    64 Bit with only 1-2GB of RAM?

    That is like blowing a 10 gallon air compressor through a straw!
    Apple what the heck do you think you are doing?

    That is nothing more than marketing ploy to get people reinterested in the smartphone as we are already seeing saturation in the market place.

    It's all about laying the groundwork for future products.
  • Reply 40 of 391
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member

    "Anyone who thinks they know any of this better than Apple is either wrong or wasting their lives if they are not already generating billions of dollars in value with their grand expertise. Anyone who thinks they know any of this better than Apple is either wrong or wasting their lives if they are not already generating billions of dollars in value with their grand expertise."

     

    This bears repeating. Over and over.

     

    Basically the ultimate rebuke to every single troll nonsense comment made here since the 10th.

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