
Toshiba Pares Losses on Report of Apple Investing in Chips - rayuela
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-14/apple-may-invest-billions-of-dollars-in-toshiba-chips-unit-nhk
======
IBM
Reuters' story mentions that Apple would take a 20% stake while Foxconn would
own 30%. With Toshiba keeping a stake as well [1].

It's certainly not in Apple's interest to let this industry consolidate
further [2]. Memory prices have already been on the rise and Apple is using
more of it (that actually could be the reason why it's rising).

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-
apple-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-toshiba-accounting-apple-
idUSKBN17G085)

[2] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/275886/market-share-
held...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/275886/market-share-held-by-
leading-nand-flash-memory-manufacturers-worldwide/)

~~~
posguy
Over the past decade, the memory market has been flooded with cheap chips,
causing most players in this market to lose value while breaking even or
making a slim profit on memory sales.

Hopefully, Apple is planning to single source or majority source their memory
through Toshiba, and give them funds to develop more advanced memory on newer
processes, as that is what this market needs to develop further and faster.
Apple may extend their engineering talent into building their own memory
controller perhaps, similar to how they have done a ton of in house design for
the ARM SoCs used in the iPhone/iPad lineup, instead of using off the shelf
ARM designs.

~~~
yeukhon
I am surprised to hear the negative sentiment on the memory market as for most
users who build computers don't always look for the high-end memory. In fact,
I am not sure how much performance gain one get from a high-end RAM on a
gaming system.

~~~
posguy
IIRC it can give a 30% to 40% performance boost on APU based systems, as the
increased bandwidth to the GPU allows for much faster processing.
Alternatively, Intel decided to put a few hundred megs of cache on their iGPU,
which has made their graphics performance much better, and lessened the gains
from increased Ram speed.

[https://semiaccurate.com/2014/01/15/exploring-effect-
memory-...](https://semiaccurate.com/2014/01/15/exploring-effect-memory-
bandwidth-amds-kaveri/)

~~~
user5994461
Gamer machines don't use APU, they have a dedicated graphic card.

~~~
posguy
Ugh, I've been trying to tell my friend that, but he won't even invest in the
most minimal of GPUs.

------
hliyan
Vertical integration (e.g. designing and fabricating their own hardware
components, sourcing their own raw materials) is probably the best investment
of Apple's cash reserves.

~~~
twoodfin
Why? Don't they benefit tremendously from building (mostly) on an ultra-
competitive, near-commodity components market?

When they want something strategic (Retina screens, custom ARM) they make a
big investment, but I can't see how getting directly into the fab business
gives them any kind of long-run advantage.

------
israrkhan
Apple has huge offshore cash reserves. Investing (or acquiring) an offshore
company makes sense for them. There are some speculations[1] about Apple
buying Disney. I do not think that will be possible without a major tax break.

[1] [http://www.businessinsider.com/rbc-analysts-speculate-
apple-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/rbc-analysts-speculate-apple-
acquiring-disney-2017-4)

~~~
adventured
The Apple-Disney fantasy has been peddled around for years. It crops back up
every couple of years, when some analyst or business writer dusts it off for
attention.

For example, 2011:

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-apple-should-buy-
disney...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-apple-should-buy-
disney-2011-04-19)

~~~
r00fus
This idea made more sense when Jobs was leading Apple. He had significant
shares in Disney due to his Pixar holdings, and at the time there was cross-
board membership between the two companies.

Of course maybe that was a good reason for them never to merge while still
coordinating strategically.

~~~
velodrome
FYI, Bob Iger (Chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company) sits on the Apple
board.

[https://www.apple.com/pr/bios/](https://www.apple.com/pr/bios/)

------
ksec
I could understand Apple going into CPU or GPU business. After all when you
have 250M annual devices shipment, roughly the size of the whole PC market
segment, these high margin cost could be eliminated, not to mention they
aren't getting the best or what they need.

But Memory? But NAND and DRAM are commodity, in fact for most of their life
time Memory companies tends to lose money. Not to mention China are pouring in
tens of billions into memory Fabs alongside with billions of other incentives.
In pretty much every business Chinese steps in is a race to bottom. I just
dont see any value of getting a holding on to a memory fab / capacity.

~~~
anonymfus
This could change when/if computational RAM goes mainstream.

~~~
amelius
Well, I can imagine that if you can build a GPU, then you can also build a
memory with processing elements attached to it. Therefore, going after CPU/GPU
companies seems more sensible.

~~~
pjc50
Memory/processing integration is not as simple as it sounds:
[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/134585/preci...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/134585/precise-
differences-between-dram-and-cmos-processes)

------
skdotdan
Owning that much cash, why they don't just buy the companies that they need?

~~~
throwaway40483
No way a foreign company will be allowed to buy Toshiba due to national
security concerns. One of domestic players will be to chip in and be partial
owner.

~~~
nkkollaw
Why national security..? If there's a world war and all of a sudden Japan
doesn't have computers? (genuinely curious)

~~~
bigtimeidiot
> _If there 's a world war and all of a sudden Japan doesn't have computers?_

Pretty much. If you're at war you need that materials to feed the war machine,
which includes the metal to build the plane as well as the computers that go
in the cockpit (and let's not forget the knowledge to build it all).

~~~
nkkollaw
Got it.

Kind of makes sense.

------
Animats
Apple buying the memory business seems uninteresting. That's a commodity
business with low margins. Toshiba does make ARM CPUs, and Apple might want to
get into the CPU business, but that's not the business being offered for sale.

~~~
kogepathic
_> Apple might want to get into the CPU business_

Apple is already in the CPU business?

Every iPhone and iPad sold in the last 5 years has used an Apple designed CPU
core. [0]

Apple has chosen to keep the CPU exclusive to their mobile products as they
obviously feel it gives them a competitive advantage. They could sell the SoC
to others if they wanted to.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A6X](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A6X)

~~~
nkkollaw
Amazing, the A10 is a quad-core 2.34 GHz CPU. My Late-2016 MacBook Pro has a 2
GHz Intel Core i5.

I don't know a lot about CPUs, but isn't the A10 more powerful? Why don't they
use them for their laptops, already..?

~~~
jl6
You can't compare CPUs from different architectures (ARM vs Intel) based
purely on clock speed. There are a lot of other differences which mean things
like the A10 generally aren't faster than similarly-clocked laptop chips.

~~~
nkkollaw
That's true.

Yes, I don't know a lot about CPUs.

~~~
ClassyJacket
It's true, a recent MBP will destroy the iPhone or iPad in a benchmark. You
can't compare Apples to oranges with CPU speeds alone. However, you can run a
benchmark. And on a popular one, GeekBench, the iPhone generally beats the
non-Pro MacBook.

And:

"The iPhone 7 scores better on both single- and multi-core than any MacBook
Air ever made, and performs comparably to a 2013 MacBook Pro."

[https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/2385400](https://browser.primatelabs.com/v4/cpu/2385400)

[https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/6170528](https://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/6170528)

[https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/15/iphone-7-geekbench-
benchmark-...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/09/15/iphone-7-geekbench-benchmark-
scores/)

~~~
tooltalk
where can I find an iPhone with single-core A processor that outperforms a
MBP?

~~~
nkristoffersen
The benchmark runs either single core or multi core. Is not a single core
iPhone.

