4 ms·

Do you have a source to the a4 being Samsung designed?

by msh 14y ago

ZeroGravitas 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4#Design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4#Design "The Cortex-A8 core used in the A4 is thought to use performance enhancements developed by chip designer Intrinsity (which was subsequently acquired by Apple)[12] in collaboration with Samsung.[13] The resulting core, dubbed "Hummingbird", is able to run at far higher clock rates than other implementations while remaining fully compatible with the Cortex-A8 design provided by ARM.[14] Other performance improvements include additional L2 cache. The same Cortex-A8 CPU core used in the A4 is also used in Samsung's S5PC110A01 SoC.[15][16]"
- simonh 14y ago
  That comment only refers to the core. These SOC designs include a considerable amount of other components and it's the selection of which of these components to include, how to arrange them and how to optimise the overall system constitutes the design, which was done by the team at Apple (including many engineers that used to work for Intrinsity, no doubt). e.g in the next paragraph after your quote from the same Wikipedia article: "RAM is connected to the processor using ARM's 64-bit-wide AMBA 3 AXI bus. This is twice the width of the RAM data bus used in previous ARM 11 and ARM 9 based Apple devices" The cores are the same - ARM cores are widely reused and licensed in different SOC designs - but they are just one part of the overall SOC which also includes graphics cores, DSPs, I/O controllers, sensors such as gyroscopes and inertial sensors, radio circuitry, etc.
  - ZeroGravitas 14y ago
    Read my other links, they go into detail about exactly which parts of the SoC are different, and how little that means. You appear to be claiming with that quote that it's evidence against Samsung design and manufacture that a newer ARM component was used in a new generation of chips based on ARM reference designs. I don't see how that makes any sense. Maybe if it was an Apple bus, or if Samsung wasn't one of the world leading producers of cutting edge ARM-based chips, but otherwise I don't get it. ARM reference cores like the A8 are widely used, but not specifically the hummingbird, which is an actual instantiation of that reference design and which is only used in Samsung chips, like the A4. The links also compare the 3GS SoC, which everyone seems happy to concede is a Samsung design, and notes that many of the 3rd party bits were basically unchanged when "Apple" "designed" the "A4".

Do you have a source to the a4 being Samsung designed?

by msh 14y ago

Do you have a source to the a4 being Samsung designed?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4#Design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A4#Design "The Cortex-A8 core used in the A4 is thought to use performance enhancements developed by chip designer Intrinsity (which was subsequently acquired by Apple)[12] in collaboration with Samsung.[13] The resulting core, dubbed "Hummingbird", is able to run at far higher clock rates than other implementations while remaining fully compatible with the Cortex-A8 design provided by ARM.[14] Other performance improvements include additional L2 cache. The same Cortex-A8 CPU core used in the A4 is also used in Samsung's S5PC110A01 SoC.[15][16]"

simonh 14y ago
That comment only refers to the core. These SOC designs include a considerable amount of other components and it's the selection of which of these components to include, how to arrange them and how to optimise the overall system constitutes the design, which was done by the team at Apple (including many engineers that used to work for Intrinsity, no doubt). e.g in the next paragraph after your quote from the same Wikipedia article: "RAM is connected to the processor using ARM's 64-bit-wide AMBA 3 AXI bus. This is twice the width of the RAM data bus used in previous ARM 11 and ARM 9 based Apple devices" The cores are the same - ARM cores are widely reused and licensed in different SOC designs - but they are just one part of the overall SOC which also includes graphics cores, DSPs, I/O controllers, sensors such as gyroscopes and inertial sensors, radio circuitry, etc.
- ZeroGravitas 14y ago
  Read my other links, they go into detail about exactly which parts of the SoC are different, and how little that means. You appear to be claiming with that quote that it's evidence against Samsung design and manufacture that a newer ARM component was used in a new generation of chips based on ARM reference designs. I don't see how that makes any sense. Maybe if it was an Apple bus, or if Samsung wasn't one of the world leading producers of cutting edge ARM-based chips, but otherwise I don't get it. ARM reference cores like the A8 are widely used, but not specifically the hummingbird, which is an actual instantiation of that reference design and which is only used in Samsung chips, like the A4. The links also compare the 3GS SoC, which everyone seems happy to concede is a Samsung design, and notes that many of the 3rd party bits were basically unchanged when "Apple" "designed" the "A4".