I'll say this again, the 40% of chip business that Samsung has is most like for everything non-A8, the older apple product. It is too hard to have a SOC on two different lithograph technologies and deal with the difference they cause.
A production line is a production line, it runs the process it was set up to run.
Most likely Apple would not have introduce this level of complexity into a new product like the i6 or new iPads.
I have no idea what you are talking about here. Apple has moved forward with every iPhone release.
The Fact that Samsung is acting like whore to get back the business they lost is only good for apple and the rest of us it allows them to get better pricing,
Get a grip on yourself! To go to 14 nm Samsung needs to retool its factories for the new processes. That means tearing out the old lines and installing the new to the extent required. You can not run production while doing this.
TSMC will have to compete to keep the business and their overhead is lower than Samsung, Samsung may have to give it away to get the business back,
You hear that sucking sound it the money Samsung is going to be loosing.
Samsung and Apple are basically partners here. They literally work years ahead to make sure that each new hardware release from Apple has the technology available to support that new iOS product. I really think that the relationship portrayed in the Apple fanboy press is far different in reality.
These things are getting powerful enough to run a desktop/laptop system with "console quality" graphics. Even if that "console quality" is a generation ago (which is debatable), the power is remarkably impressive.
It is impressive that Apple has come as far as it has so quickly. However let's be realistic here iPad is basically ATOM class performance right now, that is Intels lowest end processors. As such Apple has a long ways to go yet.
I think Apple will eventually make the full shift away from x86 in favor of their own custom chips.
I would hope so. However Intel appears to be far more willing to do custom chips and as such they mightnworkmwith Apple to deliver a custom i86 chip for Apples Mac hardware. In the end it really doesn't matter for me but many many customers need native i86 support.
They are clearly on top of their game designing ARM chips for themselves, and can simply sit back and pick which ever fabs can handle the production.
Apple has basically caught the entire ARM market with its pants down! As for fabrication you need to realize that they may be working two to three years ahead of product introductions. That is Apple and Samsung have likely started work on A9 at least three years ago.
And I couldn't agree more about split-view, multitasking, and multiple accounts.
Again I have to disagree here, especially with the idea of multiple accounts which would literally ruin the platform. As it is IOS already multitasks very well. When you say multitasking I suspect that you mean having More than one app displayed at a time. That would have some benefit but I would expect Apple to deliver something better than a split screen.
I've been using split-view for a couple of years now and it is hard to imagine life without it. I honestly thought Apple would announce split-view with the 6 plus.
On an iPhone - that would be nuts. I eventually expect them to do something with the iPad though I'm not sure you would call it split screen.
They must be working on it, right?
Apple could leave split screen behind and deliver something new. They have been patenting various 3D technologies for some time now. Apple could certainly innovate their way past the kludge that split screens suggest.
The days of either CPU or GPU performance doubling are probably over.
GPUs are horizontally scalable, so they should follow Moore's law of doubling performance every two year (linearly to number of transistors) until the law itself is over (probably not within a decade)
It'd be interesting to get an Asomething chip (or 2) in a box like an AppleTV or HomeServer where heat and battery were not a concern -- and just let'r'fly!
It certianly would be nice to know where the A8 tops out clock rate wise. I suspect that Apple keeps the clock rate as low as possible to limit power usage. On to of that I understand that it runs on what is TSMC low power process, I really don't know where that process tops out either. However imagine the same basic architecture running on a performance targeted process and that chip hitting say 2.5 to 3 GHz. It would certainly be an interesting development.
Last I knew TSMC 20 nm performance process wasn't ready yet. However the idea that we might see a chip with double the clock rate in a small box has a certain appeal to it. In an AppleTV replacement it would certianly make for a very interesting product, especially if they supported gaming on the box.
One real possibility is Apple including the Apple Pay Secure Element on the A9. Apple installed the NFC chip in the new iPads, but did not include the NFC antenna circuitry; the sole reason for the NFC chip's existence on the iPad is for the Secure Element to support Apple Pay.
Other possibilities would be to include the NFC circuitry on the A9 or to include some/all of the other communications circuitry (cellular/WiFi/Bluetooth) so Apple would not have to rely on third-party silicon. An additional benefit might be power savings.
Another process shrink should provide plenty of room for the modem processor. However Apple could buy the IP from Qualcomm or come up with their own. It wouldn't be irrational for them to make an IP purchase here to move forward with integration real fast. Power savings would be a real benefit as would be the space savings. Space is a huge issue in most IOS devices. More space would allow for more flash, sensors or other features.
Apple hirings would seem to indicate Apple is working on Plan B that I emphasized in your quote above. Perhaps they did try to buy the IP from Qualcomm and got rebuffed - no one may ever know.
It certianly would be nice to know where the A8 tops out clock rate wise. I suspect that Apple keeps the clock rate as low as possible to limit power usage. On to of that I understand that it runs on what is TSMC low power process, I really don't know where that process tops out either. However imagine the same basic architecture running on a performance targeted process and that chip hitting say 2.5 to 3 GHz. It would certainly be an interesting development.
Last I knew TSMC 20 nm performance process wasn't ready yet. However the idea that we might see a chip with double the clock rate in a small box has a certain appeal to it. In an AppleTV replacement it would certianly make for a very interesting product, especially if they supported gaming on the box.
OMG, a gaming box at a fraction of an X Box!!! This would finish off Sony too.
Samsung and Apple are basically partners here. They literally work years ahead to make sure that each new hardware release from Apple has the technology available to support that new iOS product. I really think that the relationship portrayed in the Apple fanboy press is far different in reality.
Samsung has no glimmer of an idea what's on the silicon they're cranking out to Apple's specs. For example, Samsung made 64-bit chips for Apple and were shocked to learn that once it was announced. Apple does make it viable for Samsung to push into 14nm territory by offering contracts for successfully producing yields at that scale, but I'd hardly call that "partners."
These things are getting powerful enough to run a desktop/laptop system with "console quality" graphics. Even if that "console quality" is a generation ago (which is debatable), the power is remarkably impressive. I think Apple will eventually make the full shift away from x86 in favor of their own custom chips. They are clearly on top of their game designing ARM chips for themselves, and can simply sit back and pick which ever fabs can handle the production.
And I couldn't agree more about split-view, multitasking, and multiple accounts. I've been using split-view for a couple of years now and it is hard to imagine life without it. I honestly thought Apple would announce split-view with the 6 plus. They must be working on it, right?
Yes, I agree. They have to be working on moving to their own chips. In the past few years whenever talking about the AX chips at product announcements, they nearly always mention that it's 'desktop class', this isn't by accident. The performance of these will continue to push forward, even if they throttle them back a bit in the mobile devices. Then we'll have another announcement that OS X has been living a double life again and a transition to ARM in the computers. iOS is a scaled down OS X and is already running on ARM today in the public's hands.
But this will only occur when the AX chips are comparable to current desktop chips, but I don't think that is as far away as we might think.
This will give Apple full in-house chip control and better battery life.
Yes it will be faster. But honestly, there isn't one single app that uses the power of the A8 apart from high frame-rate video capturing. Not even games. Where are the blockbuster titles like Infinity Blade or Real Racing to show off the power of the iPhone 6 / iPad Air 2? When are apps get more powerful?
You ask an interesting question, that has a revealing answer.
The Apple chip, at it's current design and clock speed, can run at full speed without having to dial back performance. Unlike Samsung's design, that has to dial back within a matter of minutes due to over-heating issues. This means Apple has designed in headroom in performance... so, if you believe Apple is not taking advantage of the full power of the A8, you may not have considered this issue. Samsung's new devices hit the ceiling way too often (to their owner's dismay).
Q: what exactly does 'Desktop class' mean anymore? For [B]most[/B] people iPads are desktop class. Surfs web, check email, does casual gaming. I dare say that even fits the iPhones,especially the 6 plus (sending from it now).
I propose going forward that we define our arguments more narrowly. For hardcore gamers, your rigs are 'Gaming' class. For people who are into 3D modelling, sound production, etc, we classify as 'Production' class. Why? Because most desktops people buy and in use in Enterprise are eclipsed by iPads already. And therein lies the truth to tablets, to most people it is more than capable of doing the things we do on our PCs already. All of you arguing that the A9 is incapable of running the latest PC titles at full FPS or modelling are a super niche. Less than 1% of the overall PC community. The ARM chips will never be XBox or PS or Intel chip powerful. But then,they are not meant to be. PS vita and NDS watch out tho.
Samsung has no glimmer of an idea what's on the silicon they're cranking out to Apple's specs. For example, Samsung made 64-bit chips for Apple and were shocked to learn that once it was announced. Apple does make it viable for Samsung to push into 14nm territory by offering contracts for successfully producing yields at that scale, but I'd hardly call that "partners."
I don't buy that. IMO, it would be impossible for Samsung to not know a fair bit about the A7 and it being 64bit. I think more likely is Samsung Mobile "acted" shocked so as not to alert Apple that they knew about the A7.
It requires a significant amount of collaboration between a team of Samsung engineers and Apple engineers in order to fabricate a processor. It's not as simple as Apple emailing them a file and telling them to mass produce based on the "schematic".
Another possibility is Samsung knew Apple was working on a 64bit A7, but thought it was a product way into the future. And we're then "shocked" when Apple requested large scale production of the A7 and also found out Apple had re-written iOS to be 64bit. That's one half of the puzzle Samsung would know nothing about.
Q: what exactly does 'Desktop class' mean anymore? For most people iPads are desktop class. Surfs web, check email, does casual gaming. I dare say that even fits the iPhones,especially the 6 plus (sending from it now).
I propose going forward that we define our arguments more narrowly. For hardcore gamers, your rigs are 'Gaming' class. For people who are into 3D modelling, sound production, etc, we classify as 'Production' class. Why? Because most desktops people buy and in use in Enterprise are eclipsed by iPads already. And therein lies the truth to tablets, to most people it is more than capable of doing the things we do on our PCs already.
All of you arguing that the A9 is incapable of running the latest PC titles at full FPS or modelling are a super niche. Less than 1% of the overall PC community. The ARM chips will never be XBox or PS or Intel chip powerful. But then,they are not meant to be. PS vita and NDS watch out tho.
"Workstation" class has been used for years and yeah... works fine.
These things are getting powerful enough to run a desktop/laptop system with "console quality" graphics. Even if that "console quality" is a generation ago (which is debatable), the power is remarkably impressive.
It is impressive that Apple has come as far as it has so quickly. However let's be realistic here iPad is basically ATOM class performance right now, that is Intels lowest end processors. As such Apple has a long ways to go yet.
I think Apple will eventually make the full shift away from x86 in favor of their own custom chips.
I would hope so. However Intel appears to be far more willing to do custom chips and as such they mightnworkmwith Apple to deliver a custom i86 chip for Apples Mac hardware. In the end it really doesn't matter for me but many many customers need native i86 support.
They are clearly on top of their game designing ARM chips for themselves, and can simply sit back and pick which ever fabs can handle the production.
Apple has basically caught the entire ARM market with its pants down! As for fabrication you need to realize that they may be working two to three years ahead of product introductions. That is Apple and Samsung have likely started work on A9 at least three years ago.
And I couldn't agree more about split-view, multitasking, and multiple accounts.
Again I have to disagree here, especially with the idea of multiple accounts which would literally ruin the platform. As it is IOS already multitasks very well. When you say multitasking I suspect that you mean having More than one app displayed at a time. That would have some benefit but I would expect Apple to deliver something better than a split screen.
I've been using split-view for a couple of years now and it is hard to imagine life without it. I honestly thought Apple would announce split-view with the 6 plus.
On an iPhone - that would be nuts. I eventually expect them to do something with the iPad though I'm not sure you would call it split screen.
They must be working on it, right?
Apple could leave split screen behind and deliver something new. They have been patenting various 3D technologies for some time now. Apple could certainly innovate their way past the kludge that split screens suggest.
I have say those are some pretty good responses.
I will say that it would be nice to have real multitasking once the hardware and software catches up.
At some point we will be rendering video with mobile devices or other such tasks normally saved for desktop use. It would be nice to be able to listen to a podcast and browse the Web while that is going on in the background.
And I will say split view is awesome, and personally I can't live without it. Not until something better comes along. It's not a kludge at all. That's just my opinion.
Apple's A8X utilizes two Imagination Tech 4-cluster GPUs. How is that hinting at custom GPU?
It's still heavily customized, you can't just plug the two in and expect it to work.
But, I don't think they'll switch away from Imagination just yet since they're so close to them anyway right now that Imagination may as well be an Apple division. Apple seemingly gets Imagination's best products month before everyone and is able to put them in its product 1 year before it gets to anywhere else.
Comments
Samsung and Apple are basically partners here. They literally work years ahead to make sure that each new hardware release from Apple has the technology available to support that new iOS product. I really think that the relationship portrayed in the Apple fanboy press is far different in reality.
what will the A9 chip have that the A8 chip does not? better battery life would be awesome.
More mayonnaise.
The days of either CPU or GPU performance doubling are probably over.
GPUs are horizontally scalable, so they should follow Moore's law of doubling performance every two year (linearly to number of transistors) until the law itself is over (probably not within a decade)
If a law is temporal, then it’s not a law.
It certianly would be nice to know where the A8 tops out clock rate wise. I suspect that Apple keeps the clock rate as low as possible to limit power usage. On to of that I understand that it runs on what is TSMC low power process, I really don't know where that process tops out either. However imagine the same basic architecture running on a performance targeted process and that chip hitting say 2.5 to 3 GHz. It would certainly be an interesting development.
Last I knew TSMC 20 nm performance process wasn't ready yet. However the idea that we might see a chip with double the clock rate in a small box has a certain appeal to it. In an AppleTV replacement it would certianly make for a very interesting product, especially if they supported gaming on the box.
Apple hirings would seem to indicate Apple is working on Plan B that I emphasized in your quote above. Perhaps they did try to buy the IP from Qualcomm and got rebuffed - no one may ever know.
OMG, a gaming box at a fraction of an X Box!!! This would finish off Sony too.
Samsung has no glimmer of an idea what's on the silicon they're cranking out to Apple's specs. For example, Samsung made 64-bit chips for Apple and were shocked to learn that once it was announced. Apple does make it viable for Samsung to push into 14nm territory by offering contracts for successfully producing yields at that scale, but I'd hardly call that "partners."
I agree.
These things are getting powerful enough to run a desktop/laptop system with "console quality" graphics. Even if that "console quality" is a generation ago (which is debatable), the power is remarkably impressive. I think Apple will eventually make the full shift away from x86 in favor of their own custom chips. They are clearly on top of their game designing ARM chips for themselves, and can simply sit back and pick which ever fabs can handle the production.
And I couldn't agree more about split-view, multitasking, and multiple accounts. I've been using split-view for a couple of years now and it is hard to imagine life without it. I honestly thought Apple would announce split-view with the 6 plus. They must be working on it, right?
Yes, I agree. They have to be working on moving to their own chips. In the past few years whenever talking about the AX chips at product announcements, they nearly always mention that it's 'desktop class', this isn't by accident. The performance of these will continue to push forward, even if they throttle them back a bit in the mobile devices. Then we'll have another announcement that OS X has been living a double life again and a transition to ARM in the computers. iOS is a scaled down OS X and is already running on ARM today in the public's hands.
But this will only occur when the AX chips are comparable to current desktop chips, but I don't think that is as far away as we might think.
This will give Apple full in-house chip control and better battery life.
You ask an interesting question, that has a revealing answer.
The Apple chip, at it's current design and clock speed, can run at full speed without having to dial back performance. Unlike Samsung's design, that has to dial back within a matter of minutes due to over-heating issues. This means Apple has designed in headroom in performance... so, if you believe Apple is not taking advantage of the full power of the A8, you may not have considered this issue. Samsung's new devices hit the ceiling way too often (to their owner's dismay).
Except Apple wouldn't sell it at a fraction of the cost, plus there would be the cost of the controllers, and any required cameras, sensors etc
Except Apple wouldn't sell it at a fraction of the cost, plus there would be the cost of the controllers, and any required cameras, sensors etc
You are pretty much right. When has Apple ever done anything "at a fraction of someone else?"
I propose going forward that we define our arguments more narrowly. For hardcore gamers, your rigs are 'Gaming' class. For people who are into 3D modelling, sound production, etc, we classify as 'Production' class. Why? Because most desktops people buy and in use in Enterprise are eclipsed by iPads already. And therein lies the truth to tablets, to most people it is more than capable of doing the things we do on our PCs already.
All of you arguing that the A9 is incapable of running the latest PC titles at full FPS or modelling are a super niche. Less than 1% of the overall PC community. The ARM chips will never be XBox or PS or Intel chip powerful. But then,they are not meant to be. PS vita and NDS watch out tho.
I don't buy that. IMO, it would be impossible for Samsung to not know a fair bit about the A7 and it being 64bit. I think more likely is Samsung Mobile "acted" shocked so as not to alert Apple that they knew about the A7.
It requires a significant amount of collaboration between a team of Samsung engineers and Apple engineers in order to fabricate a processor. It's not as simple as Apple emailing them a file and telling them to mass produce based on the "schematic".
Another possibility is Samsung knew Apple was working on a 64bit A7, but thought it was a product way into the future. And we're then "shocked" when Apple requested large scale production of the A7 and also found out Apple had re-written iOS to be 64bit. That's one half of the puzzle Samsung would know nothing about.
"Workstation" class has been used for years and yeah... works fine.
I have say those are some pretty good responses.
I will say that it would be nice to have real multitasking once the hardware and software catches up.
At some point we will be rendering video with mobile devices or other such tasks normally saved for desktop use. It would be nice to be able to listen to a podcast and browse the Web while that is going on in the background.
And I will say split view is awesome, and personally I can't live without it. Not until something better comes along. It's not a kludge at all. That's just my opinion.
Apple's A8X utilizes two Imagination Tech 4-cluster GPUs. How is that hinting at custom GPU?
It's still heavily customized, you can't just plug the two in and expect it to work.
But, I don't think they'll switch away from Imagination just yet since they're so close to them anyway right now that Imagination may as well be an Apple division. Apple seemingly gets Imagination's best products month before everyone and is able to put them in its product 1 year before it gets to anywhere else.