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I'm also curious about this. And, even moreso - did apple just start designing chips from scratch or did they buy someone who already had some cutting edge tech

by nchmy 1y ago

I'm also curious about this. And, even moreso - did apple just start designing chips from scratch or did they buy someone who already had some cutting edge technology? Its hard to believe that they're beating everyone just out of nowhere...

criddell 1y ago
Right after the launch of the original iPhone, Apple bought P.A. Semi for $27 billion to work on chips for future iPhones.
- kridsdale1 1y ago
  A lot of those guys had a BBQ at my apartment complex for a celebration hosted by my roommate, who worked at Apple’s Silicon Team with them. Lots of cool things to talk to them about. This was around the time of the iPhone 7. A huge number of them were Iranian.
- colinprince 1y ago
  actually, $278 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi
  - criddell 1y ago
    Oh right you are. I shouldn't trust my memory for trivia that old.
dagmx 1y ago
It’s not out of nowhere. It’s just that people didn’t pay attention to their mobile chips. But Anandtech had articles as far back as the A12 7 years ago where it was competing with the intel chips of the era A secondhand link because anandtech is restructured now unfortunately https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/05/apples-a12-bionic-comes-close-to-desktop-cpu-performance-in-benchmarks https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/05/apples-a12-bionic...
- astrange 1y ago
  > because anandtech is restructured now unfortunately …because he left to work on the chips.
  - dagmx 1y ago
    The changes to the site are very recent, and they continued doing stellar reports after he left too.
  - amelius 1y ago
    and silenced by Apple, I guess.
robertjpayne 1y ago
This is the payoff of nearly over a decade of R&D being poured into their chip development. Apple is a vertical integration company and the CPU/GPU in their devices was a clear sore spot of relying on external vendors they did not like. You can see their lead continuing and growing with things like their new modem used in some iPhones

by nchmy 1y ago

criddell 1y ago

Right after the launch of the original iPhone, Apple bought P.A. Semi for $27 billion to work on chips for future iPhones.

kridsdale1 1y ago
A lot of those guys had a BBQ at my apartment complex for a celebration hosted by my roommate, who worked at Apple’s Silicon Team with them. Lots of cool things to talk to them about. This was around the time of the iPhone 7. A huge number of them were Iranian.
colinprince 1y ago
actually, $278 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi
- criddell 1y ago
  Oh right you are. I shouldn't trust my memory for trivia that old.

dagmx 1y ago

It’s not out of nowhere. It’s just that people didn’t pay attention to their mobile chips. But Anandtech had articles as far back as the A12 7 years ago where it was competing with the intel chips of the era A secondhand link because anandtech is restructured now unfortunately https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/05/apples-a12-bionic-comes-close-to-desktop-cpu-performance-in-benchmarks https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/05/apples-a12-bionic...

astrange 1y ago
> because anandtech is restructured now unfortunately …because he left to work on the chips.
- dagmx 1y ago
  The changes to the site are very recent, and they continued doing stellar reports after he left too.
- amelius 1y ago
  and silenced by Apple, I guess.

robertjpayne 1y ago

This is the payoff of nearly over a decade of R&D being poured into their chip development. Apple is a vertical integration company and the CPU/GPU in their devices was a clear sore spot of relying on external vendors they did not like. You can see their lead continuing and growing with things like their new modem used in some iPhones