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

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  • Reply 81 of 391
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Galbi View Post



    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.

     

    But but but Intel Pentiums were 32-bit with only 1-4MB of RAM?

    That's like blowing a 10000 gallon air compressor through a straw!

    Intel what the heck do you think you are doing?

     

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

  • Reply 82 of 391

    I wonder if DED is posting kudos and congratulations to himself using newly created sock handles. I'm serious.

  • Reply 83 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.

    Yes it certainly is possible that Samsung was involved or will even continue to make all of the A7s. The article notes this.

    However, it is presenting a series of facts that suggest that TSMC is ready earlier than expected. We will have to wait to find out for sure, because nobody that knows is talking yet.

    The rest of the article is pointing out other known facts.
  • Reply 84 of 391
    We really need to excuse people with an IQ below 64 in these threads.
  • Reply 85 of 391
    adamcadamc Posts: 583member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Galbi View Post



    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.

     

    Arm chips are extremely memory efficient so they may not need that 4gb as in desktop.

     

    Read Ben Bajarin excellent write on this at http://techpinions.com

  • Reply 86 of 391
    mstone wrote: »
     
    mstone wrote: »
    What server OS runs on ARM? Just curious.


    OS X.

    LOL, probably, but I just did some Googling and it turns out that in June 2013 at Red Hat convention in Boston, Fedora demoed the first full Linux distribution running on ARMv8. The article did not elaborate if it was SoC but I assume so.

    The concept is still confusing as to updating the software. As we do it now we just copy some files into a directory but with SoC you have to flash the entire image and reboot don't you? Not exactly ideal for servers. I have servers that have been running 24/7 for  years without a reboot while we have upgraded various core server applications such as php, mysql, apache,etc, not the kernel though.

    Well iOS and OSX are now both 64-bit. I haven't jailbroken an iOS device for at least 4 years, but even then it looked structurally like OSX -- with a few unneeded constructs removed, a few new ones added and a touch UI. I suspect they are even closer now.

    I don't know if you really need to "flash the image" and reboot - or if Apple is just being lazy as there [currently] is no need to keep, say, the AppleTV running during update.


    IMO, 64-bit iOS 7 and A7 chip will come into their own on the NeXT AppleTV and iPads (A7X chip, anyone?).

    In other posts, I've mentioned what I see happening to the AppleTV -- everything from a major player game console, 4K video content delivery, Home Control Server, Home Video Streamer to multiple iPads as personal TVs...


    I can also see a similar headless self-contained AppleTV-like package, with thunderbolt, used as a Home/Backup/iCloud server.

    The above package could also be used standalone or as a module of a server or render farm.

    And, yes, for these uses the 'uptime' advantages of 'nix will need to be exploited.
  • Reply 87 of 391
    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.

    Actually, Apple's first 64-bit PowerMac G5 from 2003 had 256MB standard on the low end, and even into 2006 the machine shipped with only 512MB from the factory. Lots I expansion potential in them, but few power users of the day installed more than 2GB.

    64-bit Windows PCs similarly were commonly using 1GB of RAM while still taking advantage of 64-bit features.

    Having more than 4GB wasn't common before ~2008. 64-bit desktop PCs arrived in 2002-2003.
  • Reply 88 of 391
    ash471 wrote: »
    ascii wrote: »
     
    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.

    Very good point.  For sure Apple has been testing 64 bit for years, just like they were testing Intel chips for a decade before switching in the Mac.  It is the little things that make it possible to make a switch from 32 bit to 64 bit.  Often times we castigate Microsoft as being incompetent for its inability to pull of transitions that Apple makes look so easy.  In reality, Microsoft and Samsung aren't as stupid and incompetent as they appear.  They just don't have a culture of vision, planning, and attention to details that Apple has.

    Yeah...

    While we were arguing over the paint job, hub caps and upholstery (UI, icons, skeuomorphics) -- Apple was replacing the engine (and we didn't even notice) :???:
  • Reply 89 of 391
    ronbo wrote: »
    One of the things that frustrates me about Dilger's writing is that he clearly spends a huge amount of time writing all-purpose notes about Apple. And then whenever there's a small point to be made, he copies huge SWATHES of these notes and ends up with having an ENORMOUS article. You have to pick through carefully to find the pertinent material. I've long since learned that there's not much to be gained. AI, please make it so I can tell who's written each story, so that I don't have to click these Dilger links.

    You can usually tell by the headline -- and, if it has the editorial badge, it's almost a given!
  • Reply 90 of 391
    stevemost wrote: »
    AppleInsider, thanks for seeing beyond the gold and other color phones and reporting on the depth of technology and innovation that is Apple. With 64bit A7 and with battery saving M7 Apple is laying a solid foundation for the future.

    Agreed. Tim's "doubling down" on secrecy actually worked pretty well. While all if the blogs were focused on phone colors and the "cheap" iPhone, Apple stuns with the new Mac Pro and now the internals of the 5s.
  • Reply 91 of 391
    ronbo wrote: »
    One of the things that frustrates me about Dilger's writing is that he clearly spends a huge amount of time writing all-purpose notes about Apple. And then whenever there's a small point to be made, he copies huge SWATHES of these notes and ends up with having an ENORMOUS article. You have to pick through carefully to find the pertinent material. I've long since learned that there's not much to be gained. AI, please make it so I can tell who's written each story, so that I don't have to click these Dilger links.

    Your summation of the writing process is not correct, but yes AI articles have a byline if you're not interested in reading much. You can wait it out for summaries that will appear later.

    But what a silly thing to take the time to login and complain about if your time is really so valuable.
  • Reply 92 of 391
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Command_F View Post

     

     

    I think that has to be right.

     

    I don't think the A7 story has played out yet: the 64-bit architecture seems unnecessary for a phone (just as 4 cores do), just make the 32-bit cores go faster (as Apple did in A6). The 64-bit architecture brings more than removing the 4GB barrier bur doesn't seem to earn its keep (in a balanced, energy-efficient design). It brings heavy-weight compute that the new image-processing functions in the camera might exploit but surely that's not enough to justify it.

     

    However, Apple does not do specs for their own sake so there's a reason somewhere. How about the free iWork apps being the consumers of the performance, providing content-creation so iWork online (in Internet Explorer) can compete with MS Office? So perhaps the coming new iPads will be the major beneficiaries of A7's power. That would be exciting.


     

    You gain a performance benefit, even if the memory barrier is not an issue.

     

    The A7 has more general purpose registers (31 instead of 14), and these are all 64-bits wide. More registers means less use of the stack or RAM to hold temporary variables such as pointers, counters, etc. If you have a large block of data to process, a 64-bit program can do it in 64-bit chunks at a time, instead of looping through twice as often, processing it 32-bits at a time. There are a few other novelties in the 64-bit ARM design, like PC-relative addressing, guaranteed 128-bit SIMD operations, etc., none of which are about memory barriers.

     

    For most people, the A7 will mean "faster."

  • Reply 93 of 391
    cpsrocpsro Posts: 3,192member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Galbi View Post



    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?

    Galbi, you're funny, as in funny-strange. Apple knows it's making a faster mobile processor and a faster microprocessor in general, that's what. To start with, the A7 has twice as many general purpose registers as the A6 or even Intel's X64 processor architecture. (Oh, wouldn't Intel and AMD like to have 16 more registers to work with? <img class=" src="http://forums-files.appleinsider.com/images/smilies//lol.gif" />)

  • Reply 94 of 391
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by bottleworks View Post



    This needs to have "[Editorial]" before the headline.

    It will have about the same information content and value as your signature.

  • Reply 95 of 391

    It makes sense the A7 is TSMC. Apple could still place a large order for the A6 with Samsung for the 5C and iPad Mini so Samsung wouldn't even notice a significant change in A6 requests to signify anything's going on. I think Samsung is truly surprised by the A7.

     

    I'd like an A7X in the Apple TV. That would give it the necessary power to be a decent gaming device as well. And Apple could make the Apple TV an exclusive 64bit machine. Open it up to App developers (like so many developers want) but make it mandatory that all Apps must be 64 bit from the start (this would be easy since there's no installed base of Apps to convert like there is with the iPhone/iPad).

  • Reply 96 of 391
    Any one notice how the steady stream of leaks stop right after an Apple announcement.
  • Reply 97 of 391
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AdonisSMU View Post



    Any one notice how the steady stream of leaks stop right after an Apple announcement.

     

    No shit

  • Reply 98 of 391
    The argument about Qualcomm chips being used in Samsung in North America is uninformed - they are used because Qualcomm has a monopoly on the cellular baseband chips required for several of the carriers in North America, and it is better power to use Qualcomm's all-in-one than to use Qualcomm's baseband only chip with Samsung's Exynos. Several companies have done this, including Samsung's S3, so nothing new to see here.

    You are able to correctly identify why Samsung's Exynos 5 can't be used in NA, but that's an example of a design choice in well understood circumstances.

    The result, not the appologetic explanation, is interesting. Only some fraction of GS4s will have that heavily hyped chip, but conversely, the economies of scale (already smaller than iPhone 5) will be spilt with Qualcomm.

    Ask yourself why the far more profitable Apple designed the iPhone to use a separate AP and BP rather than a custom integrated part that it could only sell in half of the world, necessitating a third party chip for NA with an entirely different architecture.

    Your explanation, from that perspective, highlights again that Exynos 5 is simply a poor business choice.

    It's not nearly as hard to invent new stuff as it is to choose which new stuff you should be working on and pursuing as a strategy.
  • Reply 99 of 391
    jragostajragosta Posts: 10,473member
    philboogie wrote: »
    We really need to excuse people with an IQ below 64 in these threads.

    Sure, but what would we do without the fandroids?
  • Reply 100 of 391
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by AdonisSMU View Post



    Any one notice how the steady stream of leaks stop right after an Apple announcement.

     

    Nowherelese.fr just committed suicide. /s

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