All Articles Tagged pa semi

Apple Insider is reporting (via CNet) that Apple has hired away Mark Papermaster, IBM’s VP of Microprocessor Technology Development.

When Apple bought Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semi), and reportedly signed licensing agreements with ARM and PowerVR, we kinda sorta suspected Steve Jobs was getting serious about spinning his own custom systems-on-a-chip for the iPhone and the greater iPod platform.

Hey, if they can switch from Intel integrated to Nvidia chipsets to support their Core 2 Duos on the Macbook line, they can certainly role their own mobile brains, right?

IBM is suing on the grounds of a no-compete clause, which has historically been worthless in California (which is likely why IBM is suing in New York!)

TiPb, of course, doesn’t really care about no frivolous lawsuit. We just want to see what kind of “screaming” fast new iPhones we can has next year!

We love it when a plan comes together. What plan? How’bout Apple buying super low-power fabless chip design firm Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semi) back on April 23, which Steve Jobs later said would make “system-on-chips” for the iPhone and iPod? How about PowerVR graphics cores reaching a mega-licensing deal with an unnamed company? (Which might just rhyme with Snapple…) And how about now, a Mr. Wei-han Lien, formerly of PA Semi, updating his Linked[In] profile to read: “Senior Manager Chip CPU Architect at Apple”, and more specifically, “ARM CPU architecture team for iPhone”? (ARM having reportedly also reached a long term licensing deal with an unnamed company)

Put them all together, and what do we get? A scary hardcore look at what will drive the next (and/or next after next) iPhone v3. And according to Macrumors:

By developing its own ARM variant, Apple could create a processor that meets the specific needs of the iPhone and iPod, building support for functions such as the touch screen or scroll wheel into silicon and possibly savings on costs by reducing the number of processors needed in each device. In addition, Apple’ will be able to maintain tighter controls on who knows what about its future products by disposing of an outside chip supplier.

Wanna bet Steve calls them “screamers”? And Carmack claims PS2-class gaming?

Got an iPhone or iPod Touch? Then you’ve already got a PowerVR graphics core crunching your eye candy. This week, however, Imagination Technologies revealed that an “unnamed company” has acquired a new mega-license for their current and future tech.

While this could be Apple and could just mean incremental adaption of new graphics cores going forward, tie it together with some other recent news and rumors, including the equally “unnamed” deal with current iPhone/iPod Touch processor licensor, ARM, and Apple’s more public acquisition of fabless chip design firm Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semi), and MacRumors thinks something bigger could be in the works:

Apple is positioning itself to deliver custom chipsets based on existing iPhone technologies for future devices.

We agree. iPhones and iPods aren’t the Mac, where a unique chipset (PowerPC) lacking the volume needed for competitive pricing led to Apple’s famed Intel switch (and the rebirth of the black/grey market clones). Handsets and iPods, and whatever else becomes part of Apple’s new Mobile WiFi Platform could just leverage some custom hardware not only for differentiation, but to deliver that advanced, “unmatchable” technology Apple keeps harping on about.

We reported, and reported again, and pondered, and speculated some more about Apple buying Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semi), but now Steve Jobs himself has put the rumors to rest with a pretty clear statement as to his intentions:

PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods

Of course, like any Lost season finale cliff hanger, Jobs’ answers lead only to more questions. When will Apple switch from the current iPhone and iPhone 3G Infineon S-Gold chips to PA Semi? By the third gen device? Fourth? And who will PA Semi — a design company, not a fab — be working with to produce these systems-on-a-chip? Will Infineon be cut out completely? Will Intel’s new Atom platform never stand a chance on the iPhone? (Just the iTablet?!)

We know OS X is amazingly portable, having already run on PowerPC, Intel, and ARM architectures, so transitioning shouldn’t be a problem for the hardware makers, but what about software developers? Will we be looking at Universal App Store apps on day?

(Universal Apps are the name for applications that are currently compiled to run on both PowerPC and Intel Macs — with increased effort on the developers side).

And what makes an in-house design so compelling it will overcome the lost economies-of-scale Apple enjoys by using more widely adopted architectures? (One of the reasons they switched to Intel on the Mac side).

Ars Technica offers some ideas (and further analysis):

Though there aren’t any more details available than the quote above, it’s plausible to infer that the SoCs in question will be ARM-based. Some of the key members of the PA Semi team were formerly part of Intel’s XScale group, which designed a line of low-power, ARM-based embedded processors before being sold off as part of a company-wide restructuring.

Guess we’ll have to just wait (for WWDC 2010?) and see. Curiouser, as they say, and curiouser.

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What’s going to power the next generation iPhone 3G? Infineon again? Insider Intel? A curveball from PA Semi? And more importantly — when are we getting our hands on one?! What do YOU think?

To give you some help, here’s a HUGE roundup of all the iPhone 3G chipset and ship date rumors. Epic-style. Because let’s face it, roughly 0.01 seconds after Steve Jobs pulled the first iPhone from his pocket back at Macworld 2007, and someone, somewhere, put aside their childlike sense of wonder long enough think: “Nice! What’s the next gen going to be like?”

Complementary, contradictory, obvious, confusing, all but confirmed or from left field via outer space, the rumors have flooded the internet ever since. It’s become almost impossible to keep track of them all. But we’re going to try!

One week from today Steve Jobs takes Moscone Center stage for the sold-out WWDC keynote, and according to everyone and their newsfeed, announces the iPhone 3G. In eager anticipation, every day this week, TiPb wil be rounding up a different set of next generation rumors, from 3G to GPS, release dates to price points, colors to casings, 2.0 software to .Mac .Me services, and this weekend we’ll wrap it all up with a look into the WWDC/iPhone 3G Crystal Balland a roundup of the very best of YOUR predictions.

So come on, let’s get in on!

[Digg it!]

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Apple Insider’s Prince McLean, whose pieces often seem.. ahem… Roughly Drafted… brings us an in depth look for what we might see in the next generation, 3G iPhone, and in a word, it’s hardcore.

McLean begins with a profile of Imagination’s Open GL ES 1.1, PowerVR MBX that powers the current iPhone (and many other mobile devices), and then gets into the next generation, 2.0, PowerVR SGX — which brings the shaders, and the VDX core with its mobile HD video codec.

Putting the pieces together, including an unprecedented Samsung announcement that it will be manufacturing these technologies, Imagination’s mysterious unnamed licensee, and the flexibility the newly acquired PA Semi gives them, design-wise, McLean (through some assumptive leaps, to be sure), paints a glowing picture of Apple’s future gaming and video potential:

By gaining access to exclusive new generations of mobile graphics technology, Apple can differentiate its products from other smartphones and mobile Internet devices with an edge in performance while offering full support for industry standard OpenGL ES graphics. [...]

Whether this theory is ultimately proven true or not, I think the SDK event — and its clear focus on games — showed that Apple finally might just be taking the space seriously. What do you think?

Following Apple’s acquisition of PA Semi yesterday, and some of the early theories surrounding it, comes word on reaction to the deal, and some more theories as to how Apple may leverage its new technology.

First up, Apple Insider (via EETimes) points out that the Palo Alto semiconductor design firm warned existing companies that:

[A] buyout by a then-unnamed company was entirely disconnected from its existing and future architectures

This bit of news, which is interpreted to mean Apple did not buy the company for its energy efficient PowerPC-based chip designs, wouldn’t be using them in upcoming products, and may not continue with previous roadmaps, has sent ripples through PA Semi’s current customer base (which includes military juggernauts Lockheed Martin and Raytheon).

Next, Roughly Drafted delves deep into the purchase and comes up with the following: the ability to differentiate their products by developing proprietary hardware components (e.g. for video acceleration, something already prepared for via Core Services), making it harder for others to copy (and clone?) their offerings, while simultaneously getting engineers that specialize in areas Apple values (low level, energy efficient), and have relationships (RD conjectures Texas Instruments, which invested in PA, manufactures their designs) that could benefit Apple.

[P]owered by Intel processors, Apple has seen phenomenal growth in Mac unit sales. That has helped the company amass a $19 billion cash pile that allowed Apple to snatch up the team at PA Semi at a bargain basement price in the midst of a recession. Apple is having its cake and eating it too.

What do you think?

Following up on Casey’s story this morning about Apple buying chip designer PA Semi, Valleywag (yeah, I went there…) brings another possible angle to the “yeahbuwhy?” table:

[The PA Semi chip's suitability for the iPhone] may well have nothing to do with why Apple bought the company. PA Semi’s prize is its founder, Dan Dobberpuhl, a famed chip designer, and his 150-person staff. At less than $2 million per engineer, the price Apple paid is in the range Cisco pays to snap up talented engineers. With them working at Apple, Jobs can push established chipmakers to adopt its technical innovations and perhaps swap licenses for intellectual property. That’s far more likely than actually switching away from Intel chips for the Mac; Apple actually explored using PA Semi’s chips before choosing Intel. Even the iPhone, which would benefit more from PA Semi’s low-power chips, is an unlikely candidate for an all-new chip design. Why? Volume economics favor Intel and Samsung so strongly that it’s hard to imagine that a new microprocessor design from the PA Semi team could replace their wares. $278 million doesn’t buy Jobs a rival chip; it buys him a tool to chip away at his suppliers’ prices.

Of course, other angles remain actually using the chip design (though PA Semi does not manufacture their own chips, meaning someone with a fab, like Intel, would still be needed), licensing the technology/technologies to someone like Intel to produce proprietary chips to differentiate Apple offerings (and make life harder for Hackintosh’ers??), or just to beef up the patent portfolio and put a little fear into Intel to, as Valleywag put it, increase their bargaining position.

Personally, getting the engineers and licensing the tech makes the most sense to me at this point, but who knows if come Macworld 2009, El Jobso will pull the back off a 4G iPhone to reveal a brush-metal PA Semi chip glittering inside? What do you think?