3 ms·

Processor is always a harder to produce part and there is only handful of suppliers. Not true in case of screens, batteries, may be also memory. Why they choos

by nexneo 17y ago

Processor is always a harder to produce part and there is only handful of suppliers. Not true in case of screens, batteries, may be also memory. Why they choose their own product instead anyother? May be its better, at just 1Ghz 10" interface is super fluid. 10 hours of video on single charge. And owning supply chain doesn't only mean more profit. Now they control features and tweak chips to their own needs much more easily.

ippisl 17y ago
I'm not sure this is true with an arm processor. A lot of semiconductors companies are working on an arm version , and optimizations for low power. And the arm platform is quite an open platform. I bet any successful company can work with big semi companies to tweak chips. The biggest advantage is secrecy.If apple has some unique feature - it gives them the time to secretly do research on processor architectures for it. But not a lot of value for features everybody are looking for. in this case open r&d is better.
- aaronblohowiak 17y ago
  There is such an overhead when dealing with an external company. Integration projects are rarely fun. I postulate that having your hardware designer report to the same guy as the chip designer makes the process much more streamlined. No waiting for contracts / bizdev, being scheduled with competing projects, et cetera. The powervr chip in A9 could be configured to support OpenGL (non-es), but the TI Omap series has it set up for OpenGL ES instead. Now, if you are apple, you could probably get TI to change that for you... but then you're talking about contracts & process management and integration once again. Wouldn't it be nice to just set directions and have it done?
timthorn 17y ago
"Processor is always a harder to produce part and there is only handful of suppliers." That's how ARM started. The designers of the Archimedes computer looked round for a powerful but cheap CPU and couldn't find one, so they decided to build their own. They had a very small team, so by necessity it was a simple design - but that ended up being its strength.
vidarh 17y ago
ARM, MIPS, Sparc, PPC and x86/x86-64 compatible CPUs are all available from multiple suppliers. There's still reasons, though, such as piecing together a systsem on a chip to meet specific power and feature requirements.

by nexneo 17y ago

ippisl 17y ago

I'm not sure this is true with an arm processor. A lot of semiconductors companies are working on an arm version , and optimizations for low power. And the arm platform is quite an open platform. I bet any successful company can work with big semi companies to tweak chips. The biggest advantage is secrecy.If apple has some unique feature - it gives them the time to secretly do research on processor architectures for it. But not a lot of value for features everybody are looking for. in this case open r&d is better.

aaronblohowiak 17y ago
There is such an overhead when dealing with an external company. Integration projects are rarely fun. I postulate that having your hardware designer report to the same guy as the chip designer makes the process much more streamlined. No waiting for contracts / bizdev, being scheduled with competing projects, et cetera. The powervr chip in A9 could be configured to support OpenGL (non-es), but the TI Omap series has it set up for OpenGL ES instead. Now, if you are apple, you could probably get TI to change that for you... but then you're talking about contracts & process management and integration once again. Wouldn't it be nice to just set directions and have it done?

timthorn 17y ago

"Processor is always a harder to produce part and there is only handful of suppliers." That's how ARM started. The designers of the Archimedes computer looked round for a powerful but cheap CPU and couldn't find one, so they decided to build their own. They had a very small team, so by necessity it was a simple design - but that ended up being its strength.

vidarh 17y ago

ARM, MIPS, Sparc, PPC and x86/x86-64 compatible CPUs are all available from multiple suppliers. There's still reasons, though, such as piecing together a systsem on a chip to meet specific power and feature requirements.