Apple is working fervently on its own chip technology for the post-PC era, according to TechCrunch. Specifically, Apple has 1,000 engineers (or about 5% of its Cupertino workforce) working on its series of processors for upcoming products.
Steve Jobs himself said that “getting low power and smaller is the key to everything” when it comes to chip design. Apple is thinking ahead to the future of the revolution it started with products like the iPhone and iPad.
Citing a “veteran Silicon Valley CEO who knew Jobs,” TechCrunch says that Apple’s engineers are working on breakthroughs in battery life and chip size.
There’s also a huge focus being placed on flash storage:
“Not only are Apple’s processors extremely power efficient, but Apple is also removing the hard drives from its products and replacing them with flash memory chips. It’s not just iPhones and iPads, the MacBook Air’s storage is also flash. All of Apple’s products are moving in this direction. When you combine these two fundamental changes at the silicon level, “form factor no longer becomes an issue,” explained the Silicon Valley CEO.”
Apple recently implemented the A5 processor in the iPhone 4S — the same chip that powers the iPad 2. The A6 chip is expected to drop next year, based on Apple’s release pattern. The A5 is twice as fast as the A4 chip (which powers the iPhone 4), and Apple’s silicon will undoubtedly keep getting smaller and more powerful.
Do you think that Apple will eventually implement proprietary chips on all of its devices, including desktop? If Apple’s focus is on chips for mobile, where does that leave the Mac?
