Opinion: Apple Should Have Gone With Intel Instead of TSMC 229
itwbennett writes "Apple is planning to have its ARM processors manufactured by TSMC — a move that blogger Andy Patrizio thinks is a colossal mistake. Not only is TSMC already over-extended and having trouble making deadlines. But Intel was clearly the better choice: 'Intel may be struggling in mobility with the Atom processors, but Intel does yields and manufacturing process migration better than anyone,' says Patrizio. 'While TSMC wrestles with 28nm and looking to 20nm, Intel is at 22nm now and moving to 14nm for next year. This is important; the smaller the fabrication design, the less power used.'"
Ultrabook II? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Ultrabook II? (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember when Intel took the MacBook air design and turned it into the Ultrabook reference design for its Wintel PC OEMs? Why would Apple not want that to happen again, only faster?
hmmrhh. that's not the reason. apple is still happy buying the latest and greatest from intel.
the reason intel isn't fabbing arms is that they get better money out of fabbing haswell with their production capability.
Apple nor anyone else wants to pay Intel enough to go back to fabbing arm cpu's. they made some top of the line arm's back in the day, but the real money in arm wasn't top end but the bottom end and they got better things to do with their fabs.
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Unless someone has the price that Intel quoted to Apple, all of this speculation is worthless. One would assume that Apple is smart enough to understand the advantages of 20nm over 28nm, and the technical superiority of Intel's fabs.
One might reasonably assume that either Intel's terms, pricing, or both were the problem, not Apple understanding less about architectures than 'blogger Andy Patrizio'.
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Apple is big and rich and dumb and yadayada, but Tim Cook got Job's attention for one thing and one thing alone, the man is considered a God at procurement.
In other words, if Tim thinks its a right move, then theres a bloody good chance that its the right move.
He might have lousy taste compared to his predecessor, and he might have completely ballsed IOS 6 , but the man can procure, as that is his thing.
Re:Ultrabook II? (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple nor anyone else wants to pay Intel enough to go back to fabbing arm cpu's. they made some top of the line arm's back in the day, but the real money in arm wasn't top end but the bottom end and they got better things to do with their fabs.
Do you seriously think Apple is not fronting the cash for TSMC's upgraded fabs? Paying cash up front to suppliers so that it can get first access to the newest parts is one of Apple's key strategies and it's the reason Tim Cook got to be the CEO.
If you ask me, Apple either knows something we don't about TSMC, or it wants to build TSMC up as a strategic move to counter Samsung, Qualcomm, Intel, and other companies.
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Mod up this comment it's absolutely correct!
Oh wait, it as authored by an AC.
They don't count.
Re:Ultrabook II? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ultrabook II? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ultrabooks have been around since the 90's. only thing that changed is that intel is now making decent ultra low voltage CPU's and they use flash memory instead of HDD. otherwise Sony used to make some PHB happy laptops in 2000 and 2001 that were thin. PHB's loved them for travel
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Ultrabooks are not subnotebooks; they're designed to be as fast, if not moreso, than regular notebooks.
"Ultrabook" is an idiotic category name to begin with. I fail to understand what's so "ultra" about it. Do we have also have "ultratops" on the stationary side of the spectrum? I thought that these were traditionally called "workstations". But it's also possible that I have a brain tumor and my memory is compromised. Just sayin'.
Re:Ultrabook II? (Score:4, Funny)
Remember when Intel took the MacBook air design and turned it into the Ultrabook reference design for its Wintel PC OEMs? Why would Apple not want that to happen again, only faster?
What'd Intel do? Use rounded corners?
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Re:Ultrabook II? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember when Intel took the MacBook air design and turned it into the Ultrabook reference design for its Wintel PC OEMs? Why would Apple not want that to happen again, only faster?
I disagree. Copying a form factor is not really copying design. That's a bit like saying that every hatchback car today is a copy of the original Japanese hatchbacks or whoever first produced the design. While it is true at one level, it is too simplistic a statement to make.
Anyway - I think the biggest challenge for Intel is not its process technology (process shrinks are going to get a lot harder in every iteration, but that holds true for everyone - including Intel and probably more so for TSMC, Samsung, and others). It is actually not even an x86 vs ARM architecture thing - ARM architecture superiority has pretty much been debunked since Medfield's release.
The biggest challenge for Intel, IMHO, is that it is simply not used to (and not geared for) SOCs. Intel has always designed and manufactured discrete chips whereas the entire mobile industry prefers, nay wants, highly integrated SOCs. This is the one aspect where Qualcomm kicks everyone's butt. To put it another way, Intel's fight is not with ARM or TSMC or AMD. Intel's fight today is with Qualcomm. Intel *needs* to get the same level of integration in its SOCs as Qualcomm - otherwise no one will want a bunch of discrete chips from Intel even if Intel shouts itself hoarse about how much better its chips are. And this goes for Apple as well. If Intel can give Apple an SOC that integrates the CPU, GPU, modems and other chips (I'm actually not an expert here but I would say things like DAC, GPS, etc. - anything that is not MEMS), I have a feeling that Apple will find it very hard to say "no".
I don't mean to sound grand but I honestly feel that the future of semiconductors will be highly integrated one-chip SOC based solutions that are "cheap as chips".
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http://www.ehow.com/facts_6860900_specifications-dell-latitude-ls.html [ehow.com]
So was Dell. The specs aren't on their website any more for it, but I had one of these. It was a great little laptop until the battery died and I didn't feel like spending $120 for a new battery when I could get a new computer for $300.
Re: Ultrabook II? (Score:2)
Oh yeah, the PowerBook 2400c and Duo 2300c, back in the 90's. The 2400c was mostly sold in Japan but I did run across a few in the US. The Duo 2300c is the lightest laptop Apple made until the MacAir.
Poor premise (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a silly premise. Who says Intel would even want to do it? Why would Intel want to go back into ARM fabrication when they are trying to beat ARM chips with Atom?
Re:Poor premise (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah sounds silly.
On the other hand, why would Samsung want to make chips for Apple when Apple is suing them?
The answer to all of these questions is money. Lots and lots of money.
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Doubtful. Intel makes way more margins on their chips than third party fabs do when making chips for others. They'd only end up making less money.
Re:Poor premise (Score:5, Insightful)
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As opposed to altruism, which we enlightened ones understand is what truly drives business and economy.
One day, Apple will learn. Till then they will have to be content with earning gobs of money and being fairly successful.
Re:Poor premise (Score:5, Insightful)
The silliest premise is that some blogger knows more about the issues with different chip fabs than Apple does. For that blogger to say Apple made a mistake, before we've seen any results from the deal? Stupid. Simply click bait.
Re:Poor premise (Score:4, Insightful)
+1 to this...
Intel has great foundries and process engineers, and they have been pretty consistently ahead of TSMC and other foundries. There are also a million reasons to NOT use Intel. For one, there is no way Apple will ever be Customer #1 at Intel - Intel will always always ALWAYS be customer #1 at their own fabs. If there's limited capacity, Apple would lose out to Intel. TSMC might not be willing to put Apple on a pedestal over all their other customers, but they at least won't be 2nd place to anybody - in a limited-capacity situation, Apple would get a fair share of some sort, rather than zero.
There's also an argument to be made for spreading the wealth around; Intel got their leadership position because everybody bought CPUs from them, giving them huge piles of cash to invest in R&D, making it hard for everybody else (eg AMD) to compete because they don't have the process advantage that Intel does.
Also, TSMC isn't a competitor, but Intel is trying to be with their mobile chips. TSMC sells fab space to whoever wants it, but they don't make any chips or sell any devices. Intel isn't quite a direct competitor with Apple, but there may be some desire to not give them any more profits that could be used to fund R&D of mobile chips/devices that could be used by Apple's competitors. The revenue TSMC earns will go into further process R&D, since that's their only business.
So there are all kinds of reasons to not use Intel for fab, even assuming that they would offer it to Apple.
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Sounds like a silly premise. Who says Intel would even want to do it?
Seems to me that Intel charges a high premium for all 22nm-based chips, so they wouldnt use a 22nm fab without getting big bucks in return.
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There's a lot of misinformation in these comments...
1) Intel does have a foundry business. They will make chips for third parties. They call this "Intel Custom Foundry", and they've already got clients using ARM chips (Netronome for example).
2) Apple is a huge potential customer, to the extent that Intel doesn't currently have enough foundry capacity to make both their own chips and Apple's chips (Apple sells almost as many iOS devices as Intel does chips). Getting the contract to make Apple's SoCs would be
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You can bet that Intel would rather that THEY were manufacturing Apple's ARM chips than TSMC.
Me too. I would love to see more merchant fab in the US. I'm tired of it going overseas, and Intel is consistently ahead of everyone else in fab tech.
This also proves what a crock comparative advantage is (with the possible exception of things like agriculture). Since the US has some of the highest labor costs in the world, we should have a comparative advantage in capital intensive industries with high value added per worker. There are few things that's more true of than fabs, but more and more fab capacit
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I wouldn't be so sure. You're missing two things:
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That's pretty much it. It's not in Intels long term strategic interest to have ARM chips fabbed on the best possible process, that would make them look more competitive with Intel processors. If they had massive surplus capacity in an older process then sure, I suppose they could sell that to someone, but why not just sell the equipment and move the people on to better things?
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Sounds like a silly premise. Who says Intel would even want to do it? Why would Intel want to go back into ARM fabrication when they are trying to beat ARM chips with Atom?
Good point...and there's another thing the blogger doesn't seem to really understand: that far and above, the heaviest source of power consumption in a tablet or smartphone isn't the processor, but the screen. By a very large margin, at that. Sure, you can save power by going with a tinier fab scale, but it's getting near the point of diminishing returns, and logic that throttles usage in different ways has been giving better returns anyways when it comes to processing.
As for TSMC being overextended, that a
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Yeah... Altera is the first company that Intel has sold excess manufacturing capacity to in years (if ever?), and in that case, Altera's primary products are in a market that does not compete with Intel's at all, and if anything, complements Intel's products in some cases.
Intel selling manufacturing for a competing CPU design is highly unlikely.
It appears that Intel primarily scales their fabs to meet only their own demand - there is only extra if one of their product lines experiences significantly less d
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Binary compatibility with the hundreds of thousands of apps in their store?
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Most of those are simple resolution changes. Android developers have had to deal with this since day one, iPhone developers were coddled in comparison as their aspect ratio was locked for something like five years.
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Most of those are simple resolution changes. Android developers have had to deal with this since day one, iPhone developers were coddled in comparison as their aspect ratio was locked for something like five years.
Yeah, but then Android had the tools to handle it (proper layout managers) while iOS developers had to make do with automatic resizing of controls and not much else.
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Counterpoint: They ran their network stack and file system in emulated 68K code for _years_. The fanboys never missed a beat.
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That's never stopped Apple before. "Oh, just a recompile away is a glorious land of milk and honey, here are the tools to do it, you have two months."
This time it _is_ just a recompile. From a portability point of view, any C / C++ / Objective C code written for ARM will run absolutely unchanged on x86 / 32bit. Every developer uses the iPhone / iPad simulator, which does actually compile to x86 32-bit code and uses a library to support all the iOS APIs.
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You mean the ones that are getting the crap beaten out of them by ARM on a performance-per-watt basis?
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The article pretty much said the chips would be ARM.
When you look at the glacial pace of Apple development, you will notice that they do skin and paint very well, but technical changes very slowly. They did design some packaging modifications to ARM for their A4 and A5 processors (although industry sources say the work was actually done by the contract chip designer Intrinsity).
Apple probably aren't nimble enough to switch to Atom or Silvermont [gsmarena.com] or anything not ARM. It would set them back an entire year, o
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Fragmentation is an Android feature. There's no compelling reason to change to any other chip, so why would Apple do it?
Over the 30 years of the Mac they've changed architecture twice. But only when the old architecture was dying. ARM is the most popular mobile CPU architecture in the world. There's no reason to change iOS devices away from it. Even if other architectures were more attractive (and they're not).
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Nope. Intel makes more margins on chips made for themselves than third-party fabs do.
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Because it pays big time?
it doesn't pay big time, because apple doesn't want to pay the premium necessary.
That's the entire reason why apple didn't go to them. I'm pretty sure they asked and that Intel would fab them gladly for a ridiculous fee, but Apple calculated that not even their fans would pay 100 dollars extra on top of everything else they already have going for a part they can't even see on a platform where judging speed and battery use differences in 20% region is actually pretty hard.
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Intel makes more margins making chips for themselves and they already run near max capacity. They gain nothing from being a third-party foundry.
Does the CPU matter? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Apple is the most keen to come out and say "this is our greatest _____ we've ever built" while touting the longer battery life, faster CPU speed, etc (yes many companies say similar, however Apple is the most explicit I've ever seen).
Apple also has a history of pushing limits and going for the best components they can... so the choice of TSMC over Intel does seem odd.
Note the above is being said by a PC only person.
string.Replace("greatest, "best") (Score:2)
Hit submit too soon... replace "greatest" with "best"... I forgot my Apple lingo for a moment.
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but apple will say it about anything. regardless of what it actually is.
but look at it this way, have you seen intel doing massive discounts on their cpu's lately? do they seem like they have plenty of excess capacity? would apple pay the same for a manufactured soc as they are paying for a haswell? no.
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Yes the CPU matters.
Especially switching from something like ARM to something like Atom. That is a big switch. Its not as simple as just recompiling the Operating System. There are all sorts of hardware differences to deal with.
Stepping from one ARM CPU to the next ARM CPU is a much smaller step.
That is why Apple won't switch to an Intel design at this time. It would set them back over a year. (I wouldn't be surprised to find Apple hard at work with Intel chips in their skunk works).
While you are correct
People or pundits? (Score:2)
While you are correct that there are some people who will buy it regardless of what it built with, those days are fading, as many people are fed up with the slow pace of change in the Apple phone arena, and Apple wouldn't want to incur the delay penalty of a switch, when they can accomplish the same goals with their current hardware.
Many pundits are fed up with the "slow" pace of change in the Apple phone arena, because they need new clickbait twice a day. I have yet to hear from anyone who actually owns an iPhone that they're anything of the kind. Most people buy a new phone every 2 years or less frequently. The current iPhone is a significant improvement over the 2-year-old iPhone I have now.
Or are you trying to say that "many people" know or care about things like NFC, fingerprint scanners, or other check-boxable features that most
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Are you trying to use common sense and logic? On the Internet? Here at Slashdot? What did I tell you about doing that again??!
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The CPU alone does not matter at all. It might be the infrastructure around it.
Since 5 or more decades the "CPU problem" is tackled by the compiler. Yes, compiling C or C++ for one CPU or the other is as simple as switching the compiler. Seems you missed that innovation.
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That only means the source can be the same (or at least have a few differences, dealt with by #ifdefs). But the fact that the executable binaries are incompatible does make for all sorts of things that matter. Fat binaries. Incompatibilities. Emulators. Using byte-code systems rather than native. All sorts of things. It's doable - Apple's done it twice on the Mac. But its certainly not without issues. It certainly does matter.
Android manages to exist on multiple CPUs. But then it's also one of the most frag
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Android supports 3 architectures - ARM, x86, and MIPS.
Of the three, ARM is most prevalent on practically all smartphones out there. x86 is pushed heavily by Intel, but exists on a tiny miniscule amount of phones (one from Motorola for Asia, and a couple of other bit players), and Intel has to bundle in an ARM emulator to at
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We are not talking about fat binaries or interpreters/emulators. ... no magic involved.
If I compile a C file for an intel pc running linux, it just runs
That might be what you're taking about, but if so it has nothing to do with what the person you replied to wrote. And I see now that he's already informed you of that fact.
The prospect of Apple changing processors has an awful lot to do with complications like fat binaries or interpreters/emulators.
But bottom line most of the code of your OS you simply recompile and thats it.
I'm afraid you are grossly underinformed on the topic.
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Sorry, didn't realize I was dealing with someone who has English as a second language.
You see, in English the phrase "not as simple as just recompiling the Operating System", implies that recompiling the OS would indeed be simple, but that would not solve the problem of switching processors. The problems of integrating a new processor with different pin-outs, capabilities, and requirements is referenced in the second sentence: "There are all sorts of hardware differences to deal with.".
Had you been a nativ
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Lol ... where did I learn english ... in school ofc. /.
Sorry can't copy paste on an ipade due to some java script issues with
Saying something like "it is not as simple as just" in german basically means: it won't work (or is impossible). In other words the emphasize in such a sentence is not on the later comming explanaition but already in the sentence.
So I read your example as: recompiling is impossible (because just recompiling wont work) and on top of that you have hardware issues.
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i have an iphone 5 and a Galaxy S3 that i use both daily. there isn't one thing my iphone doesn't do that i do with my Galaxy that is paid for by my employer
there is no slow pace of change with apple since the other guys aren't doing anything spectacular either.
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People are buying the platform, and it only comes from one vendor. It's not like with Android where you can compare different hardware specs. Apple will produce a single product at a given price point with a given set of hardware specs, and that's what people will buy. Not saying this is a good or bad thing, just that it's a thing.
This is only true because of continual improvement by Apple, however. Reputation does have a certain momentum (or, if it's a bad reputation, inertia) but it's not a perpetual motion machine. Produce a platform that performs badly, and people will notice; there aren't enough fanbois out there to keep Apple in the green if they produce a substandard product. And to be honest, I don't think that people know how to compare standards anymore between competing platforms in the same product space anyways. It
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Yeah, but if they can't meet production and stores are sold out people will look for alternatives. Or if they have issues and a bunch of devices come DOA they're going to have bad press and people will look for alternatives. You seem to be under the impression that the market is for iDevices, which is certainly true for some of their customers, but many others will jump ship if they think the alternatives might be better.
This is not a tech issue (Score:3, Insightful)
Intel supplies most of Apple's CPUs, yes?
To give one supplier most or all of your business gives them a HUGE advantage over you.
Just look at what happened to everyone who tied their business to Microsoft or IBM.
This is a business strategy issue - not a tech one.
Personally, I think Apple should take their cash and make their own processors, allowing for their OS to have a firmware component and thereby boosting performance and security.
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Re:This is not a tech issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I think Apple should take their cash and make their own processors, allowing for their OS to have a firmware component and thereby boosting performance and security.
No. Even Apple isn't THAT stupid.
There are well established players in the fab market. Why the hell would Apple spend years and BILLIONS, breaking into, then playing "catch up", getting an "also ran" up and going?
The company's FAR more agile this way.
One major issue on a prospective fab line (that they own themselves) could set them back years and uncountable quantities of money.
If that happens with a fab partner, they just go and shop their business around to another fab.
Then there's the fact that Apple just flat out DOES NOT WANT that kind of low-level engineering business. They a boutique "gadget" supplier. And they really don't want to be anything else.
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Intel supplies most of Apple's CPUs, yes?
Intel supplies all of the CPUs used in Apple's desktop and laptop computers, yes.
Personally, I think Apple should take their cash and make their own processors
Is that "Apple should take their cash and build their own foundries" or "Apple should take their cash and buy an existing foundry"? In either case, it's "Apple should continue to invest in foundries to update to new processes", and, in either case, I'm not sure how easy that would be.
Or is that "Apple should do their own chip designs"? Anandtech suspects they're already doing that. [anandtech.com]
allowing for their OS to have a firmware component
If by "firmware component" you mean on-chip
Intel isn't a foundry (Score:3, Insightful)
They make their own chips, and you buy what they make.
Apple isn't going to be able to get Intel to fab their custom chips for them. That isn't Intel's business model.
Intel sells their own CPUs. They don't sell your CPUs.
They just happen to have the best fabs.
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last year there were stories floating around that Intel wants to go into the foundry business. only because their manufacturing is so efficient that especially with the new processes being able to turn out so many CPU's per wafer they will have spare space in their fabs not producing revenue
Re:Intel isn't a foundry (Score:5, Informative)
Intel *is* a foundry. They make chips for third parties. They have a whole "Intel Custom Foundry" division dedicated to this. They make chips for Cisco, Netronome, Altera, etc. Some of those chips even have ARM processors.
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The answer: one (I won't say who but you can probably find out). And they aren't selling their parts yet.
There is a reason that Apple chose TSMC... Intel's level of support for their foundry business is poor right now. It turns out that their fancy process is a bitch to design for. Which makes sense since
Intel is *almost* a foundy (Score:3)
Intel *is* a foundry. They make chips for third parties. They have a whole "Intel Custom Foundry" division dedicated to this. They make chips for Cisco, Netronome, Altera, etc. Some of those chips even have ARM processors.
Intel is inching into the foundry business. [electronicsweekly.com]
They are *not* making chips for Altera. They have a deal with Altera to make chips at 14nm but Intel doesn't even have a production 14nm process yet. The Cisco deal was only signed in January. No word on when they expect to ship. Their shipping customers (Achronix, Tabula, Netronome) are all startups with limited volumes. Apple needs huge volume. I don't think Intel is ready for that yet.
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Intel was not an option (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel's high end fabs are tasked to capacity with their own chips near as I know. They are probably not interested in taking on outside orders for ARM chips.
Now I suppose Apple could switch over to x86, but I doubt they'd be willing to do that given that they own a big stake in ARM. Also at this point Intel doesn't have x86 processors suitable for phones. They may make such a thing in the future but they do not now.
So ya, Intel would be the best option... if they were an option. They have fabs above and beyond anyone else, they spend billions in R&D on it and as such are nearly always a node ahead and have good yields. However, their fabs are for them. Their 22nm fabs are busily cranking out Haswell and Ivy Bridge chips. They are not for rent for cranking out ARM chips, unless something has changed since last I looked.
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Yes. That's why RISC killed the x86 stone dead.
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The proof of it is quite simple: look at an x86 block diagram and see how much of the silicon is devoted to decoding the obsolete ISA into something the core can actually use.
The vast majority of the silicon is devoted to cache. I believe a modern Intel CPU uses 1% of the transistors for instruction processing before they get into the RISC core, and that's pretty much a fixed size unless you go back to simple in-order execution like the Atom, because all have to do the same amount of decoding and re-ordering.
That's more important on a low-end CPU where the chip is much smaller so the instruction processing will take up a larger percentage of the transistors, but as ARM chips bec
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Maybe they should consider developing their own compiler!
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Of course it is an option.
Intel's profits have been sagging for a few years due to the drop in PC sales, which is their core business. They have been unsuccessful for the most part in cracking the mobile device marker despite a lot of effort.
Investors have been pushing management to take some of their world class factories and make money fabbing chips for other companies, something that would have a big impact on their bottom line since their manufacturing technology is a generation ahead of everyone else
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Intel's high end fabs are tasked to capacity with their own chips near as I know. They are probably not interested in taking on outside orders for ARM chips.
No, what they are interested in is taking on outside technology. They'd want the right to make their own chips based on Apple's technology, whether they licensed or created it being irrelevant. Intel has never been able to make an ARM chip worth beans. XScale was fast, but it was power-hungry; it scaled up but not down. They won't be interested in fabbing for Apple alone, they'll want to be actively involved in production of a chip which they will then fab for Apple. That might actually be necessary to util
Pricing and conflicts of interest (Score:2)
My guess (Score:2)
article is wrong on all counts (Score:2)
From the article: "While TSMC wrestles with 28nm and looking to 20nm, Intel is at 22nm now and moving to 14nm for next year. "
TSMC's 28nm process is, in fact, widely considered a big success. Although it didn't ramp up initially, quite as a fast as their customers wanted, that only lasted a few months at start of 2012. Look a bit closer you see changing nodes has problems for all manufactures (even Intel).
20nm is in fact ahead of schedule. The likes of Altera are going to have to wait 2 years before they st
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I think that 28 nm is actually a reason why Apple went with TSMC instead of Intel. Samsun is expected to have their 28 nm line up soon so Apple will have two suppliers for their chips.
That's like suggesting Apple go with AMD for their desktops and laptops because they'd have Intel as a second supplier if AMD screwed them around, while Intel were so far ahead of AMD in the CPU market that if they picked Intel they'd have no other choice.
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Why would Intel want to do that? (Score:2)
"Apple is planning to have its ARM processors manufactured by TSMC — a move that blogger Andy Patrizio thinks is a colossal mistake.
Why would Intel want to manufacture ARM processors? They might make some money in the short term but the real profits are in owning the intellectual property behind the design. Intel would basically be subsidizing their biggest competitor. It would be akin to asking Microsoft to start their own linux distro or like Apple switching to Android. It makes their product undifferentiated and kills their margins.
Intel always has the option to start making ARM processors in the future but they'd be pretty fooli
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Who says Intel would cooperate? (Score:2)
Intel gets high margins on much the x86 line. What on earth makes this douche assume that Intel would be willing to accept Samsung's margins in order to enable Apple to shift even more of the consumer market away from x86???
Does Intel manufacture for others? (Score:2)
Oh they don't. Then why would they manufacture for Apple? Intel's real edge is not processor design, it's manufacturing know-how. Watch PBS's Silicon Valley and understand that Intel is less about designing great processors and more about beating the competition with better processor fabrication. Intel is at least 12 months ahead of everyone and so why would they give that lead up for Apple.
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An Appropriate Summary (Score:2)
Intel *does* make custom chips for outside people, contrary to what some people are saying. They sub out spare capacity, especially in older fabs. They just don't make them on their newest foundry processes (the ones that would be actually useful to a company like Apple) for a variety of reasons, the chief one being the newest processes are generally full to capacity. Even if there were some space available it wouldn't be near enough to satisfy Apple's demand for A-series chips. You have to remember, an A-s
Idiot (Score:2)
the smaller the fabrication design, the less power used
Ummm, no. The smaller the design the more leakage current you get and the more power is wasted as heat. Who is this idiot that wrote this completely clueless "opinion"? Intel does have a foundry unit, but they don't make lots the size that Apple would need with the fabs that Apple would want to use. The third parties aren't getting lots on 10 million finished parts per quarter at 22nm from Intel. Not unless those third parties are buying Intel branded parts.
Will they just get over it already... (Score:2)
I want workstation class ARM processors back. 16 core 4 processor behomith Motherboards to give us on the desk the performance we should have had a decade ago.
itwbennett writes (Score:2)
ITW bennett
Fuck me slashdot's editors are lazy.
Hubris, anyone? (Score:2)
Yes, I'm sure that the (more or less) biggest company in the world, currently being run by the operations guy who helped them reach record-setting levels of profit in the last decade, did not do their homework when evaluating manufacturing partners. Thanks, random blogger guy, I'm sure they'll straighten all their shit out post-haste!
Or maybe, just maybe, the guy who runs one of the most successful companies on the planet and earns more in a year than you and your family could earn in ten lifetimes, actuall
Why Does Apple Make Chips At All? (Score:3)
Mistake (Score:3)
Many people are posting as if Intel would be involved in chip design (for example: "Intel doesn't want to make ARMs."). Intel would be acting only as a foundry: Apple does the design work, sends Intel a set of files specifying mask geometry; Intel makes masks and fabricates the chips.
The questions thus become, who has good enough technology and who is a reliable supplier? If Apple doesn't need the finest tech that only Intel can provide, then using Intel isn't necessary.
TSMC having production capacity limits can be a problem, and it's likely to have delayed deliveries in a crunch. But foundry is their only business, not producing is not an option. Intel on the other hand, can decide "we need all foundries for internal use. Make your lifetime orders now; no new business will be accepted." 33 years ago (the only information I have, from a then-Reticon employee) was that this was a substantial risk in dealing with Intel as a fab.
Re: (Score:2)
We all know that Intel wasn't even an option. They're simply not in the business of fabricating third-party designs, for anyone.
Actually, that's exactly what Intel Custom Foundry does.
Re: (Score:2)
This is important; the smaller the fabrication.... the more static power used.
At 22nm, you hit v_sat before threshold anyway. The sweet spot for power is actually about 130nm.
When you say sweet spot, what sort of assumptions are you making about dynamic power consumption? Simply put, the faster your part runs, the higher the dynamic power, and the less static power matters, at least when running full tilt.
Also, for a given process there are often variants, like a high speed high static power variant and a low speed low static power option. Some companies sell parts both ways. For example some of the Analog Devices Blackfin DSP models come in those two variants.
TSMC is TAIWANESE, not Chinese (Score:3)