Apple Acquires Zayante

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
<a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-04-2002/0001699538&EDATE="; target="_blank">Press Release</a>



Apple today announced that it has acquired Zayante, a leader in IEEE 1394 (FireWire) technology and services. Founded in 1996, Zayante developes the silicon and software used by leading manufacturers to create FireWire devices. "By acquiring Zayante, Apple is extending its commitment to FireWire as the premiere, high-speed digital interface solution," Jon Rubinstein, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Engineering said in a statement. Terms of the acquisition were not released; Zayante has received US$4.5 million in venture capital financing to date.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 15
    Actually, that's 61.5% less name...
  • Reply 2 of 15
    jambojambo Posts: 3,036member
    Thanks, I'll have my Marketing Dept look into it.



    J :cool:
  • Reply 3 of 15
    nebagakidnebagakid Posts: 2,692member
    You have a marketing department? When will I see TV ads
  • Reply 4 of 15
    jambojambo Posts: 3,036member
    [quote]Originally posted by Nebagakid:

    <strong>You have a marketing department? When will I see TV ads</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Soon hopefully, I'm looking for a decent production company. Someone like Voodoo Samurai



    J :cool:
  • Reply 5 of 15
    jambojambo Posts: 3,036member
    But back on topic...



    This is great news for Apple and 1394b as <a href="http://www.zayante.com"; target="_blank">Zayante</a> makes 1394b chipsets and software.



    If you rake through the web site you'll find some references to HAVi (Home Audio Video interoperability) software and hardware as well. iTivo anyone?



    J :cool:
  • Reply 6 of 15
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    Jamie, you're on the right track. Let's just hope their firewire b spec includes 1600Mbps, otherwise it'll be a bit of a waste as you need at least 1200Mbps for uncompressed HD DV video, and the current 400Mbps is enough for the compressed kind. 800Mbps is a kind of limbo as far as usefulness is concerned.
  • Reply 7 of 15
    Speaking of iTivo... Anyone seen <a href="http://www.hothardware.com/hh_files/S&V/radeon_7500aiw.shtml"; target="_blank">this ATI</a> card yet? TV tuner, RF remote, Tivo-esque functions, and Radeon graphics for only $200. Of course, it's PC-only.
  • Reply 8 of 15
    [quote]Originally posted by Matsu:

    <strong>Jamie, you're on the right track. Let's just hope their firewire b spec includes 1600Mbps, otherwise it'll be a bit of a waste as you need at least 1200Mbps for uncompressed HD DV video, and the current 400Mbps is enough for the compressed kind. 800Mbps is a kind of limbo as far as usefulness is concerned.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    Now, now, let's not contradict ;-) There is no such thing as uncompressed DV... you mean native DV video, or DV Compressed video. It's a pet peeve
  • Reply 9 of 15
    murkmurk Posts: 935member
    Last November, during the quarterly report conference call (if I remember correctly), someone (CFO?) from Apple mentioned an upcoming acquisition for the digital hub strategy. Perhaps this is what he was talking about.
  • Reply 10 of 15
    matveimatvei Posts: 193member
    It was probably like the palm acquisition of Be inc. (to get the people). I read, I believe in the cnet report, that these were old Apple alumns. Mainly the guy who worked on firewire at Apple and Pippin at Apple.
  • Reply 11 of 15
    A couple of thoughts here:



    1. Can u say "gigawire"? Good. I knew u could.



    2. Zayante has been almost single-handedly shepherding 1394b thru the IEEE standards review process. Could it be that with that process down to dotting i's and crossing t's, Apple will take Zayante's 1394b silicon and start shipping it, making it the defacto standard? I think TI is the only one else sampling chips now.



    3. (meta-comment) in this context, future hardware was as good a place as any for this thread.



    4. The current draft spec (v 1.33) fully documents S1600 (1.6Gbs). The question isn't "will 1394b support the higher speed?" The question is, "will device manufacturers (disk drive arrays, dvd drives, video cameras, audio mixers, hdtv's...) drive the new links at the higher speed?" I suppose Apple could put a 1394b connector on a future Mac with support only for S800, especially if the bus /mb inter-connections were too slow, but that seems quite short-sighted.



    5. Can you imagine a terrabyte 1394b raid disk array running at 160MBs? Oooh, la, la. Video, multitrac-audio editting at the next level.
  • Reply 12 of 15
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    Too true M3D Jack, sorry.



    voxclamantis, actually, 1.6Gb/s would be 200MB/s, or nearly as fast as Apple's current 64bit PCI bus. Two independent channels on a desktop mac would probably be enough for just about any external storage/audio card/video capture solution you could think of. Neat, eh? You know, at that speed, it would even compare nicely to a PCI video card! Imagine a firewire video card periph to let you run two monitors off your iMac! MUhahahaha! Firewire was supposed to scale to 3.2Gb/s (400MB/s) over optical connections. I don't think we'll see that much bandwidth from Apple (on a single plug) unless HAVi spec calls for it, but a couple of channels would make just about any expansion possible for the iMac and notebook lines. At that point you wouldn't really want to use PCI cards on your powermac either, unless they get around to offering PCI-X.



    I think a modern Apple motherboard is nearing completion and it should be interesting when it finally debuts.
  • Reply 13 of 15
    brendonbrendon Posts: 642member
    I think that the nail is being hit on the head here. I think that Apple would love to have a cube like desktop (silent), and be able to give the real power users the expansion they require. Apple gets it all with this acquisition, the ability to make the chips, the ability to push through the higher speeds. Apparently this company was working on the technology that would push the speed higher. Form what I understand 1394b is fully compatible from 1600 to 400 Mbps. So what Apple could do is run one or two 1600 lines to a box for PCI cards that has its own power supply, and cooling. This would leave Apple needing to design a computer around a fast mother board. The design flexibility is very good if all that Apple has to be worried with is a motherboard and industrial design. Think of it on designing a power supply that is capable of driving the computer and all of the boards and designing a cooling system for all of it as well, or at least some of the cooling, plus the cooling of that big power supply. Apple could come out with a cube or a slab (NeXT) design and still give the power users what they want, and more, that noisy PCI box could go anywhere. I think that the range of 1394b is quite large. Apple could have it all, silent powerful desktops that are small AND still allow for power users to have the PCI slots they want AND give those power users the ability to be free of the noise if they want to put the box in another room or behind something. A very good move and still an open standard, shrewd!!



    Ty



    Sorry if I went on a bit, very exciting.
  • Reply 14 of 15
    brendonbrendon Posts: 642member
    Seems odd that there is not wild speculation about this subject. If 800Mbps were all that Apple needed that looked like a done deal in June or July time frame. Must be something more to it than Apple eyeing a jump to 800Mbps. I mean what does that get them?? FireWire is being rolled into more and more PCs it is the only communication standard for digital camcorders, it is in each of those big screen TVs that says "HDTV Ready" and "Digital Ready". I don't think that Apple buying this company will influence the consumer electronic industry to adopt it more fully or faster, they like it and are embracing it. Could they push to get FireWire adopted into DVD sound out and 5.1 receiver sound in, maybe seems like that one is already decided though. Apple looking at the set top box arena, not hardly margins are too low. Apple still needs to address the science and Bio groups, they want low profile computers that can be rack mounted. If they are going to put Shake into the mix those folks will want to cluster their macs to up the horsepower. I think that Apple would like to have silent desktop computers if they can, but broadcast production requires lots of boards, or at least some, the recording industry likes Macs and they require boards also. So the question is what would they do to address these markets?? I happen to think that being able to sever the PCI bus from the computer gives Apple great flexibility and would allow them to address all markets and still do so with one machine, cheaper. They can't make one machine for the recording industry and for the film/TV production industry and for the others that might require PCI boards, and yet they can't turn their backs on them as well. The science arena and render farms would like a small cool machine that can be rack mounted or clustered, and Apple would be foolish to turn their backs on that huge market. The Pharmaceutical industry could be worth tens or hundreds of thousands of machines per year. This group would prefer rack mounted computers and they don't need PCI slots they need CPUs, lots of them, in a small an area as they can get, the cooler the better, air conditioning costs big bucks, the PPC is well suited for this. All this requires very fast FireWire, 1394b scales all the way up to 3.2Gbps and Apple needs no permission to go right there as soon as 1394b is ratified. Folks seem to think that 800Mbps is the next stop and may well be, but what does that get Apple?? And if they wanted it they could have it in time for the late July early August roll out of the next product cycle without having to pay for the privilege and Apple certainly has the talent inside to implement 1394b 800Mbps. All they need are the drivers, they could have just bought the chips. The industry seems happy, very happy with 1394a and is not clamoring for 1394b, the harddrive makers being the exception. If you just look at set top boxes and 800Mbps it doesn't add up. Apple is up to something much more than set top boxes, they could do that now, the current version of FireWire is sufficient for that and before long 1394b will be out, again without Apple having to pay for the privilege.



    Again I go on but I'm trying to see fault in my argument, I can't.



    Ty
  • Reply 15 of 15
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    Firewire is one clustering possibility, but currently gigabit ethernet is faster. Should firewire move into the 1.6 to 3.2Gbps territory, and prove simpler to set-up for small to mid size clusters, then it may take over, especially if it's built into the machine (hardware and software). Then again there is a 10Gbps ethernet spec in the works, and some semi-proprietary stuff out right now, but that is insanely expensive.



    Yeah, very fast firewire clusters that are simple to set-up and maintain might be just the ticket for small to mid-size labs, academic use, a video/3-d studio.



    I guess where speculation is concerned around here, it's either grand delusion or nothing. <img src="graemlins/bugeye.gif" border="0" alt="[Skeptical]" />



    [ 04-05-2002: Message edited by: Matsu ]</p>
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