When you think of computer chips, Intel quickly comes to mind. However, Apple may have a lead on the chip giant when it comes to specialized silicon for mobile devices. A new report suggests Apple’s A5 design could lead to the Cupertino, Calif. company creating its own chips for MacBooks.
Piper Jaffray senior analyst Gus Richard posits that while Intel has focused on general-purpose processors with continually more horsepower, Apple has concentrated on system-on-a-chip, such as the A5 powering the iPhone and iPad. By limiting its work on chips for Apple’s mobile devices, the tech giant has been able to develop consumer-attractive features such as “instant-on” and “low-power” that best Intel.
In response, Intel is expected to enter the SoC realm in 2013. The company could be able to overshadow Apple by being a chip foundry, able to design and make its own silicon. Apple, by comparison, must negotiate with frenemies such as Samsung to actually produce the chips required to power its products.
However, while Intel mulls moving from general purpose to specialized chips, Apple could expands beyond designing chips for a select range of products to actually producing the silicon for its line of MacBooks. Such a move could put Apple in the lead not only of mobile design, but also free itself for end-to-end production of its three most-popular mobile devices.
Richard’s report is intriguing, as far as it goes. However, Apple’s advantage is unlikely to remain if it scales chip production much beyond its current product lineup. The ARM-inspired A5 might not be able to go head-to-head against the latest Intel design. At any rate. it is questionable whether Apple should even stray from its laser-like focus on creating products so cool people will line up around the block to buy.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
16 responses to “Is Apple Making More Advanced Chips Than Intel?”
Apple design the SoC, not the actual processors. It isn’t ARM inspired, it is ARM.
I guess MacBook Air could use a Quad Core A6
Not exactly. ARM is really just a set of specifications. Implementation makes all the difference which is why the A series eats Hummingbirds for lunch.
Apple designs the SoC but also fiddles with the ARM reference designs. Most of the Android chips just use vanilla ARM with a custom SoC, Apple customises the ARM parts and *also* designs a custom SoC.
Hmm. So, Hummingbird was a custom implementation of Cortex-A8 for Samsung’s 40nm (I believe) foundry node using Intrinsity’s domino logic. So yes – implementation in this case was king, but the only thing Apple can do with an ARM processor (that they take off the shelf like everyone else) is to optimise the longest paths in the design with optimal cell libraries (which is what Intrinsity – now part of Apple – will be doing, placing the fastest cells where necessary). They most likely aren’t allowed to make the CPU logically different to what ARM has delivered, because that would be a huge verification burden on Apple to make sure their changes are architecturally correct. LEC probably isn’t enough for any retiming work and so forth.
Once they’ve done the core hardening (and possibly optimal hardening of the GPU and other units as well, including the substantial cache RAMs), then of course, they design the SoC around the core, and a nice job they seem to do too.
This would be awesome, If Apple produced it’s own chips there is a better chance that the price of the units would come down. The Ultra-book book market, already cornered by Apple, would pretty much become a 1-horse race.
I need boot camp.
Hopefully, if Apple switches to ARM, Windows 8 ARM will work on ARM Macs.
All that battery life would come in real handy, especially when it takes your ARM powered Macbook that much longer to complete tasks….
alxlr8: ownage :D
alxlr8: ownage :D
Funny comment, but with the latest ARM specifications (64-bit, multi-core), I’m not so sure an ARM-based MacBook would be unusably slow. It would allow for an even thinner profile due to ARM’s lower power and heat production. Not everyone needs a fire-breathing Core i7 just to surf the web. Heck, if you asked someone before the iPad came out if they would enjoy surfing the web on a 1024×768 screen with a 1GHz processor, they would say you’re out of your mind.
“Heck, if you asked someone before the iPad came out if they would enjoy
surfing the web on a 1024×768 screen with a 1GHz processor, they would
say you’re out of your mind.”
And you’d still be out of your mind after the iPad came out. Surfing the web on an iPad is a PITA. Yes you can do it, but why would you unless it’s in a mobile environment. Surfing the web on a 15″ MacBook Pro is a PITA compared to using a 27″ display.
Apple has the cash to NOT manufacture their own chips. They can take their designs to anyone and guaranty enough production to lock up a supply chain for a couple years. They learned from the G5 debacle with IBM that they cannot allow their engineering to be at the mercy of another company. But fabrication is a commodity, and a guaranteed stream of business from Apple is enough to get a manufacturer to invest in any needed upgrades to their equipment – plus the benefit of being able to make leading-edge technology after the contract ends.
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yes, but an iPad allows you to surf much faster than any laptop. (even Macs) apple will have 15, 17 inch iPads in the next few years, this was all written out in the 80’s.
Don’t be surprised if Apple purchases ARM or AMD in the near future or buys Intel! Samsung going to rue the day they tried to cross Apple! They should check their history books & read up about Apple’s old relationship with Motorola & how that ended!
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