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They predated the SoC era, as did all the late Symbian handsets.
by Paianni 7y ago
They predated the SoC era, as did all the late Symbian handsets.
- monocasa 7y ago"SoC era"?
- skunkworker 7y agoBefore Apple bought PA Semi and started working on their own A series of System on a Chip (SoC) processors. They were using ARM reference designs before.
- jandrese 7y agoAlso before the boot was totally locked down in encrypted black boxes.
- monocasa 7y agoThen what are they talking about with the Symbian phones? And Apple didn't use ARM reference designs in early iPhones; they were using Samsung SoCs. Pretty much nobody uses the ARM reference designs except as an early prototyping target.
- skunkworker 7y agoYou're right, I forgot that they used underclocked Samsung 1176JZ SoCs.
- als0 7y ago> Pretty much nobody uses the ARM reference designs except as an early prototyping target. This isn't true. The majority of ARM based SoCs today use the Cortex or Neoverse reference designs from ARM. Today there are only a few handful of vendors who fully develop their own core, such as Cavium, Apple, and Ampere.
- monocasa 7y agoThere's a difference between ARM reference designs for SoCs (the topic in question) and ARM's designs for their CPU cores. In the context of reference designs, you see stuff like the ARM Juno designs. I've seen people (very very rarely) just drop those whole designs into their boards. But, like I said, almost nobody uses them except as a prototyping target.
- als0 7y agoI think grandparent comment was referring to the CPU part not whole SoC. Arm has never sold entire SoC beyond a limited number of test chips. Juno is a test/evaluation chip only.
- DeathArrow 7y agoBefore they bought PA Semi, they were helped by Samsung with CPU design. Samsung also fabbed their SOCs. PowerVR designed the GPUs in Apple SOCs.
- jtl999 7y agoI assume they are referring to the time before Apple used custom system-on-chip designs
- weare138 7y agoHow are we defining SoC era? Maybe before SoC's were accessible in the consumer market but the first ARM based SoC, the ARM250, dates back to 1992. Plus I'm pretty sure there are SoC's based on other architectures older than that.
- catblast 7y agoIndeed most handsets including the old iPhones and all pre iPhone pocketpc used SoCs of some sort. In fact the original iPhone had a part with stacked SDRAM. ARM and MIPS SoCs have been a staple of consumer devices for at least 20 years.
- numpad0 7y agoYeah, mobile CPUs were always called SoC since at least flip phones era. Absurd some Apple fanboys think they made it mainstream or even invented it. Those are entirely false. System on Chip are called System on Chip because they don’t expose I/O ports(like PORTA through PORTD on AVR) to the pins thus can’t interface RAM or ROM or other peripherals natively, but only over narrower buses through internal interface chips/logics. In my rule of thumb, every surface mounted “CPU” between 80 to 200MHz across industries were called SoC from 2003 through 2010s. Those CPUs/MPUs that do expose I/O directly to be interfaced to SDRAM, LCD or equivalents of North Bridge chip on PC were usually called either MPU or CPU, often MPU for they integrate some peripherals. Those were roughly 200MHz and above, including PowerPC for NAS or x86 for PC for which heat or footprint were not concerns. Those under 80-120MHz were often called Microcontrollers(uC). They were also often self contained like SoC but didn’t count, also got a lot higher clocked recently but still don’t. Intel and AMD refer to their systems as SoC since Apple started doing custom SoC, and that might give you an impression that it’s new and better. That’s not true. SoC means CPU’s main I/O ports are not exposed to pins.
- floatboth 7y ago> Intel and AMD refer to their systems as SoC since Apple started doing custom SoC Intel and AMD refer to their systems as SoC since they integrated the north bridge (which includes the memory controller) into the chip, has nothing to do with Apple. > CPU’s main I/O ports That's a weird definition. Most architectures don't have "I/O ports" and use memory-mapped I/O exclusively. And even if we read that as "any kind of I/O pins" and go back to the > can’t interface RAM or ROM or other peripherals natively part: the vast majority of mobile SoCs in the 2010s use external RAM (and storage). The memory controller is onboard and the external connection is directly to DDR3/4/.. chips.
- als0 7y agoThey were definitely SoCs.
- Paianni 7y agoI'm not a great person, I get more satisfaction from feeling like I know more than actually being critical about learning. Not sure how to purge that psychology.
- als0 7y ago> Not sure how to purge that psychology. I think that's something most of us struggle with. That doesn't mean you're not a great person :-) I appreciate the humble reply.
- sneak 7y agoYou’re already headed in the right direction by being aware of it. I don’t have any specific advice (my own natural know-it-all-ness started to fade when I was 30 or so) but being specifically aware of it is definitely a benefit; it at least allows me to pause and notice it and adjust.