

Steve Jobs: it's time we design our own iPhone and iPod chips - ii
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/06/11/steve_jobs_its_time_we_design_our_own_iphone_and_ipod_chips.html

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jws
This sounds like "plan b". There was lots of talk of "intel partnership", but
if Intel won't build what Apple wants, perhaps because they think it is
stupid, then enter plan b.

Apple has a long tradition of using custom chips where x86 uses a northbridge
through the 68k and PPC eras. I don't know if they hired out the work or did
it with an in house team, but the distinction is largely irrelevant now that
they brought a chip design team in house.

I believe the rationale was to keep the part count down by integrating as many
functions as possible. This is especially important in small consumer devices.

Consider as an example, not Apple but similar issues or how the big chip
companies can miss on specific requirements... I need to run a server in a
remote location off of solar power and batteries. I am tired of wrestling with
the OpenWRT and wrtsl54gs that I use now, but it runs on a couple of watts and
that is good. Intel releases their fabulous Atom processor that takes only 2
watts which is great because I can use a standard mini-itx motherboard,
regular old debian x86 and be happy... except the northbridge chip on the
motherboard takes 15 watts because Intel apparently didn't see a need for a
lower power northbridge. I can't afford another 360 watthours/day just for the
northbridge. Obviously my volume is wrong for custom silicon, but a system
asic that supports just the peripherals I need and memory I need designed with
an eye to power dissipation instead of top notch performance would be a big
win.

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Mystalic
Jobs might be underestimating the difficulty of designing chips and the
experience of some of the companies that currently help design and produce the
chips in their devices. Apple may have some of the world's most brilliant
engineers, but Intel, Samsung, and some of the other makers have a great deal
more experience in these areas.

Apple will get it done, but it'll be rockier than he expects and could even
affect quality.

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jmagar
I doubt very much that Jobs is underestimating the effort or the risk. This is
more likely the Apple response to why an iPhone?

Look, if the COTS chips within the iPhone are available to everyone, (they
are), then anyone can implement the same features (they will). The COTS chip
makers know this, and in fact often they put only the features that have mass
appeal in their SOCs creating a lowest common denominator solution, which
maximizes their market.

Now consider what happens if Apple can design a chip that they, and only they
use. Then the features within the iPhone will have a full lifecycle advantage
over the competition; the SOC vendors will of course copy what makes the Apple
feature "cool" but they will always be a generation behind...

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ajross
You're making the assumption that such a chip would reach market at the same
time and in the same condition. The existing chip design companies are, in
fact, really good at what they do, and they are rushing these things to market
about as fast as can be done. Hardware product cycles are much longer than
those for software, especially if you are trying to "innovate" like you posit.
You can't just rev a new chipset for ever device release.

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designtofly
I think this is a horrible idea. There's virtually no hardware functionality
that can't be attained cheaply in the OEM chip market. My guess is that Apple
wants to introduce embedded DRM/locks at the hardware level that cannot be
circumvented so that they can make sure that their iTunes based media, iPhone
apps, and whatever else they have in the works cannot be knocked off.

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Tamerlin
I don't think that this is all that bad an idea, even though Apple's not much
of a silicon design shop. Microsoft isn't either, and yet they were able to
REDUCE costs by getting a custom-designed processor for the XBox360 (yes, I
know that had its share of flaws).

Intel doesn't do custom designs, that isn't their business model. There are
some companies that specialize in that sort of thing, like IBM. There are a
number of fabless semiconductor developers that have been quite successful
this way, including nVidia. Even SUN doesn't do its own semiconductor
manufacturing, for years they relied on TI for that part.

Also, Apple acquired the company PA Semiconductor, which includes several
folks with a lot of experience in designing processors (some of their products
were among the best in the business, like the Alpha series), so it's not like
Apple would be starting from ground zero here.

I'm not sure that it's necessary, but if Apple wants custom functionality for
upcoming mobile products, it might be worth it in the long run. If they just
wanted inexpensive, high-performance, general-purpose processors, the best
route for the foreseeable future is probably to stick with x86. I don't think
it's likely however that x86 will be able to compete with the ARM in the ARM's
niche anytime soon though.

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redorb
I thinks its closed source, also what was the reason Apple came to intel on
their computers? - and why would they reverse that on their phones? .... just
seems apple is getting more evil - although probably most companies are

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mcormier
Apple went to intel for several reasons.

\- IBM PPC manufacturer reliability was killing them, there was a certain
scandal with the G5's getting past the 2.0Ghz barrier on a scale of 90 nano
meters I believe.

\- Boot camp, with an intel processor they could influence people on the fence
to get a Mac, or people that wanted to (go forbid) run windows on a Mac.

Remember, OS X is a micro kernel architecture and can easily be ported to
multiple processors.

