
Apple's A7 is Made By Samsung - shawndumas
http://createsend.ifixit.com/t/ViewEmail/r/70708E377A9A6CF92540EF23F30FEDED/EBF1F70991A04FD10F8C96E86323F7F9
======
bdcravens
Interesting for those curious about the new processor. The fact that it's
Samsung, a company supposedly at odds with Apple, isn't much of a story. It's
not even news: (from July 1!)

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732468220457851...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324682204578513882349940500.html)

They've provided parts to Apple for years, and their bottom line and stock
price have been rewarded. (represents about 15-20% of their components sales)

The mobile division and the components divisions in the company operate fairly
separately. That's why the oft commented, "They should just stop shipping
parts to Apple to punish them for the lawsuit!" is kinda ridiculous.

When it was RUMORED that Samsung lost a significant contract for Apple chips
to a competitor, they lost $10B in market cap:
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/16/us-samsung-
chips-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/16/us-samsung-chips-
idUSBRE84F0BT20120516)

~~~
junto
What is Samsung's primary stock ticker symbol?

~~~
cocoflunchy
It appears to be SSNLF, or 005930.KS?
[http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=005930.KS](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=005930.KS)

~~~
w1ntermute
Some more info: this is on the Korea Exchange[0], and it's Samsung Electronics
only.

0:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_Exchange](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_Exchange)

------
scrrr
Apple CEO has a glass of wine with Samsung CEO, laughing while reading fanboys
of both companies fight about which company is best. _wink_

~~~
dominotw
Samsung has fanboys ?

~~~
jonnathanson
I work with a fair number of (awesome!) Korean engineers, and I can say that
yes, Samsung has a lot of fanboys. It's sort of like the Apple of Korea. It's
also been gaining a lot of admiration from A/V enthusiasts in the States,
having easily supplanted Sony as the high-end consumer electronics maker of
choice for TVs and such.

Samsung is a very impressive company. It doesn't use the Nike-esque marketing
playbook Apple does, and as such, it doesn't inspire the hero worship or the
fanaticism in the States. But it's been quietly building up a massive empire.

[Full disclosure: I say this as an Apple fanboy, and as the resident iOS 7
apologist at my office (everyone here's firmly on Team Android). I own plenty
of Apple and Samsung devices, and I don't feel the need to declare absolute
brand loyalty to any one provider.]

~~~
moogleii
It always amuses me to see how much vitriol comes from anti-apple folks, when,
if they were living in Korea and held the exact same standards, they would
likely have equal hate for Samsung. Their vertical and horizontal control on
their home turf dwarfs Apple's. But no, it's just a foreign company that has
managed to do wonders _somehow_. As a chaebol, Samsung got where they are now
thanks to very favorable government assistance, that, if occurred here, would
be considered pretty controversial.

~~~
jonnathanson
While I agree with a lot of your points, I'm a little puzzled by this one:

 _" It always amuses me to see how much vitriol comes from anti-apple
folks..."_

Was I the intended recipient of that description? I'd hardly call myself
"anti-Apple," nor would I say I've engaged in "vitriol" directed at Apple.
Almost the complete opposite, in fact. :)

Apologies if I'm misreading you.

~~~
MBCook
In my reading that wasn't directed at you, but the general "wake up sheeple"
type comments you often find directed at people making pro-apple comments.

You did a great job, summed up my thoughts. If I wasn't an Apple kind of guy,
I'm sure I'd have an S4.

------
jack-r-abbit
My favorite part about this is that Gruber has been repeating the speculation
that the chip was not manufactured by Samsung. He turned out to be wrong. When
others are wrong with their "Claim Chowder" (as he likes to call it) he shits
all over then. But this is all you get from him when _he_ is wrong:
[http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/09/20/a7](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/09/20/a7)

~~~
9oliYQjP
If you look at his other posts for the day they're all short statements. Maybe
he's just in a particularly non-verbose mood.

~~~
Marazan
He almost always does short statements often of a slightly ambiguous nature.
This helps him avoid having to say he's wrong in the future.

His sterling analysis (i.e. complete failure to see it'd be a success) of the
Galaxy Note monster phones is a fine example of this.

------
tzury
Let me figure this out: Samsung manufactures Touchscreen, CPUs and perhaps
other chips for Apple, yet Apple sue them from time to time over software
patents and design ideas.

Can someone help me understand this?

~~~
programminggeek
Yes, when you are working with a company and sharing trade secrets only to
have them turn around and take those secrets to make their own devices that
compete directly with yours and then they make commercials making fun of said
products and your customers, that doesn't really help the business
relationship.

~~~
piyush_soni
I keep hearing this. What are those 'secrets' that you are talking about (Any
link which gives specific information?) Samsung has been making phones much
before Apple has been. Are those secrets "Rounded phone corners", "icons in a
grid", "Slide to Unlock", or "jumping scrollbar"?

~~~
melange
If you really think Apple has contributed nothing more to the modern
smartphone than 'rounded corners', this is not the appropriate place to ask
this question because you risk being mistaken for someone trying to start a
flamewar. I recommend quora instead.

~~~
straight_talk_2
Recommend Quora? Remind me to ignore your recommendations in the future.

As for Apple contributions, you should probably check out the lawsuits vs
Samsung.

~~~
melange
I know where the assertion about the round corners comes from.

Are you seriously claiming that this is all that Apple has contributed to the
design of modern smartphones?

------
stephengillie
Somehow, companies like Apple (and nVidia) get to call themselves "completely
vertically integrated" even though they don't own any fabs. I've never
understood this.

~~~
sliverstorm
Samsung is considered completely vertically integrated by many, even though
they don't mine their own raw materials or operate their own power plants to
power their factories. I've never understood that either.

~~~
bodski
I wouldn't be too sure!
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Engineering](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Engineering)

------
drawkbox
They also make their retina displays and many components.

[http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/04/samsung-tablet-
ipad-r...](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/04/samsung-tablet-ipad-retina-
display/)

------
umsm
If anyone is interested as to the feats of this processor, this is an
interesting review:

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-
iphone-5s-review/2](http://www.anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/2)

------
gdilla
Correction. Apple's A7 is fabricated by Samsung. It is wholly designed by
Apple. They're just using Samsung's foundry.

~~~
Mikeb85
It's actually mostly designed by ARM holdings. Apple simply designs the SoC
layout and chooses the components.

~~~
mendocino
The GPU is a design from Imagination Technologies, the CPU is an Apple design.
What part of the SoC is "mostly designed by ARM"?

~~~
Mikeb85
The CPU. Apple licenses ARM's reference designs, then creates an SoC around
that.

~~~
mendocino
The last SoC where this has been the case is the A5 (using the the ARM
Cortex-A9 MP). The Apple A6 and A7 don't use ARM cores and neither does
Qualcomm in their Snapdragon SoCs.

------
kunai
I'm not sure how this is significant. Many of Apple's core technologies and
hardware are produced by Samsung or with Samsung's help, e.g. Retina display
for MacBook Pro, A4 and previous chips, and SSDs in the MacBook Pro and
MacBook Aero.

It's quite disappointing to see this on the frontpage, in all honesty.

~~~
seabrookmx
I agree. I feel like I see this posted all the time (in comments on various
threads) and there's always a large group that is shocked and/or don't
understand.

It's silly.

------
jasonlingx
Not sure if OP realises that the unsubscribe and edit your subscription links
work for his account.

------
Oculus
How isn't Apple afraid that Samsung could steal their chip designs? Do they
pick Samsung because they simply have no other option?

~~~
corresation
Most prior Apple designs have been close to stock ARM core implementations
coupled with a PowerVR GPU. There hasn't been much if anything to steal, given
that Samsung also licenses PowerVR GPUs and is also an ARM licensee.

The A7 is interesting in that it's the first mainstream 64-bit part, but I see
Samsung being far more interested in the A53/A57 (designs that Samsung gets
straight from ARM) than the A7. The A7, if rumors are true, is a sort of
hybrid approach to use one of the next generation, 64-bit ARM cores early,
similar to what Qualcomm does.

EDIT: ARM nomenclature is such a mess. The A7 runs ARMv7 or ARMv8 using a
sort-of A57 dual-core architecture, but should not be confused with the ARMv7
Cortex-A7.

~~~
masklinn
The A7 is not a hybrid approach. A7 is an ARMv8 chip (it implements the ARMv8
ISA), but not an ARM design (that's the difference between the processor
license (can use ARM-designed cores) and the architecture license (can design
own core implementing ARM ISA). Apple and Qualcomm have both licenses. There's
nothing "hybrid" about using your architecture license.

ARMv8 provides two architectures: AArch64 and AArch32. Implementors can
implement either or both. AArch64 is the brand new architecture while AArch32
is backwards-compatible with ARMv7-A. If both are implemented, it's possible
to switch between AArch32 and AArch64 on the fly at specific change points,
giving the ability to run AArch32 (= ARMv7) applications seamlessly on an
AArch64 kernel (or an AArch32 guest os in an AArch64 hypervisor).

The A7 implements both, so do the A53 and A57.

~~~
corresation
_The A7 is not a hybrid approach._

Unless you work at Apple in silicon design, you don't know that, and to be
fair neither do I. But history has shown that every A# release gets greeted
with incredible fanfare about the completely-custom CPU work at Apple, to
later quietly get corrected when it turns out that it is at most a marginally
derived ARM core.

I'm just going with history. Given that the A57 finished design last year, and
started taping out early this year, it seems unlikely -- if not strategically
risky -- that Apple just went their own way. From a pure performance
perspective, ARM is hyping a clock-for-clock tripling of performance with the
A57 over a Cortex-A15, or a quintupling of performance at a given power usage
level.

~~~
w0utert
>> _Unless you work at Apple in silicon design, you don 't know that, and to
be fair neither do I. But history has shown that every A# release gets greeted
with incredible fanfare about the completely-custom CPU work at Apple, to
later quietly get corrected when it turns out that it is at most a marginally
derived ARM core._

His hasn't been true since the A6, which (amongst others) chipworks confirmed
is a full custom design, manually laid out even, which proves it is not a
modified reference ARM design. I don't think Apple would invest hundreds of
millions acquiring chip design shops, gradually move from increasingly
customized reference designs to full custom designs, to throw their brand new
Swift core out after one generation and start over with a reference design. So
I think it's pretty safe to assume the A7 is a pimped up A6 that implements
armv8.

I'm not sure why you're so skeptical about Apple designing their own ARM
cores, they've been going further down this path since after acquiring
Intrinsity and PA-Semi, and they are not the only ones doing this, Qualcomm,
nvidia and previously TI also design full custom ARM cores.

~~~
brigade
I'm curious, what arm cores did TI design? I know Marvell has custom designs,
but I always thought TI only did custom DSPs and licensed arm cores.

------
ek
It's also fun that they found the M7, considering that the initial teardown
left iFixit with the impression that it was just some marketing buzzword for a
part of the A7. As has been mentioned in the thread, it is still an off-the-
shelf component, but at least we know the truth now (that the "M7" really
still is a separate IC).

------
soci
IMHO Samsung and Apple compete on marketing and not in technology. That's why
you can find Samsung chips in Apple devices.

So, the vertical integration Samsung has in the manufacturing process is not
great competitive advantage. However, Apple is strongly vertical integrated in
the retail side. This makes a difference.

------
argumentum
_made_ != _manufactured_

Title is a bit confusing.

------
nicholassmith
Samsung as a chip fab is not the same Samsung that designs phones. They fall
under the same name umbrella, but likely they have individual targets to meet
annually, and Apple is one of the biggest chip consumers in town. It's a good
fit, I never get why people are surprised by that.

