Analysts debate P.A. Semi's role in forthcoming Apple wares
By Darren Murph 
posted January 20th 2010 9:19AM
posted January 20th 2010 9:19AM
It's easy to forget that Apple snapped up P.A. Semi for a song way back when, but now that we're just days, hours and seconds away from Apple's expected tablet reveal, a new wave of processor-related conjecture is hitting the fan. Richard Doherty, director of technology consulting firm Envisioneering Group, has come forward with some exceedingly detailed rumors on said tablet, a touchscreen MacBook and an OS X-based unicorn that lives in the cloud. As the story goes, Apple's pickup of P.A. Semi was primarily an effort to acquire a huge pool of engineering talent to use for its own internal designs, and now Doherty is saying that "before the year is out, Apple will have the most powerful, lowest-cost SoC in the industry." According to him, there's nothing from "ARM licensees or Intel that could challenge the power-per-watt, the power-per-buck, the power-per-cubic-millimeter of size," and he anticipates that four new products are in the pipeline from Cupertino. Need details? How's about a touchscreen iMac, an "iPod touch on steroids" with a 5-inch display, and "two different versions of media pads in the 7- to 9-inch (screen size) area." Alright Dick, you just put your reputation on the line -- here's hoping you've got your story straight.Update: Looks like UBS Investment Research has been hearing something similar. According to it, the forthcoming tablet "will be powered by a processor designed by P.A. Semi and built by Samsung."
Alright Dick.
@Mozer
..and If Dick gets it all wrong he will look like one.
Interesting...
I think that analyst just blew his wad.......
Alright Dick. lol nicely done Engadget.
@Mozer
I bet he's never heard that before! Original content.
"...the power-per-buck..." ????????
That doesn't mean squat, Apple fanboys!
Brother Jobs will charge whatever he thinks he can.
what is SoC?
@Nick Brown
=System on Chip
@Atkins
Cool yeah, but unlikely.
I think Intel will pwn them.
@revoltracers .. no chance. Intel is struggling against ARM when it comes to building very low power CPUs as for the last few decades it hasn't been their core business.
http://www.eetimes.com/rss/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=222200621
@revoltracers agree
@revoltracers
Intel is to busy obsessing over Moore's Law to innovate any new processor technology.
This new chip from PA Semi, Apple, Built by Sammy, will be called:
"The Golden Woz"
And everyone knows Woz can slay any Dragon, even the ones that Snap.
@taligent
Haven't heard of Moorestown, have you?
http://anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3716
@Solidstate89 .. course I have. And I don't dispute Intel's ability to make a fast chip it's more the ability to have a very low power one. Because the rumor that was going around last year was that ARM Cortex A9 used up to 10x less power during idle mode.
Another day, another Apple Tablet related rumor.
7 days to go, that is devastatingly long it seems. I don't know if I can make it before drowning in tablet rumors.
@Atkins
I'm shocked that you even suggest that as an option!
What sort of a geek I must be if I can simply ignore the rumors around the next big thing!
It can't be helped, I'll die when I'm dying reading the speculations about the iTablet damn it!
Just bury me with one, if there will be a color option, I prefer hot pink.
@Atkins
Bad Romance
So basically Apple is building a competitor to Snapdragon. Should cause some damage to competitors if it can provide similar performance with dramatically better battery life.
@taligent It would have to be pretty impressive to beat out the dual core 1.5GHz Snapdragon slated for the future, or the Tegra 2 with dual Cortex A9's.
Apple doesn't have the expertise in GPUs. I personally don't see them using anything but Tegra2 for their tablets.
@Vdek
They use PowerVR SGX GPUs.
Apple has also invested in Imagination Technologies the designer of the gpu, just like Intel.
@Titanium Man .. also the reason we know it is PowerVR is because of one single line in the specs (OpenCL 1.x support). The only company with an OS that has support for is Apple (they invented it after all).
@Vdek
LOL, genius, they bought the company. This isn't their stuff. It's called an Acquisition.
@Wesscoast
Ok genius, you fail to realize that they still lack the GPU expertise that Nvidia has.
@Titanium Man
Yes I realize that, however it's still a crappy GPU, just with a low power consumption.
@Vdek .. if it's such a crappy GPU why are Sony using it for their PSP2 !
@taligent
Is that a serious question? Because Sony likes to use Esoteric under performing hardware?
@Vdek
Agree, however they could pull an Intel and still stick in their own GPU, and dictate to the consumer what Apple thinks they need.
I really don't get where people are getting the idea; that just because Apple acquired PA Semi, they will be able to outperform companies that have been dong this for decades?
@Vdek They're likely not doing anything that complex. Using an ARM core and a PowerVR follow on in an SoC surrounded by support logic. Some of it could do cool things like accelerate h.264 playback or whatever, but its still not that complex. Certainly the guys they acquired could handle it. The idea here is NOT to build the most powerful GPU in the world, or compete with nVidia. Its to build one that's good enough, and fast enough and low power enough to make this product successful. If you put an nVidia GPU in there the thing would suck too much power, they'd have to put bigger batteries in it, and it would get thicker and heavier and your arm would get tired and the thing would be a failure. This isn't a desktop.
More powerful than Moorestown, Tegra 2, or the ZMS 08? Yeah, I'll believe when it I see it. It's not as if P.A. Semi has the kind of pedigree that nVidia, intel or Zii Labs has when it comes to creating SoCs.
@Solidstate89 .. Apple clearly will use the PowerVR SGX GPU given that they have a large investment in the company. And remember this is a tablet with a large, power draining screen. Performance takes second place to battery life.
@Solidstate89
He said power-per-watt as the main point and ARM based products are deffinitely ahead of Intel in that department. Also Terga 2 and ZMS 08 are ARM based designs also are they not, cortex MP cores with custom media processor/graphics tacked on. So basically the same processor with a PowerVR media chip instead. The PowerVR chips can do all the things that Tegra can do media wise, 1080p and all that jazz.
I read about this guy's predictions on another site and he is talking a PA Semi designed dual core processor with slightly lower clock rates but higher performance to improve the performance while lowering the power requirements. Combine that with the next generation PowerVR SGXMP in four or eight cores and many times the graphics power of the current SGX chips used by Apple and you might have a real media powerhouse.
what would be engadget without apple rumors, multi-touch on android discussions, mobile web browsers which can display the engadget website benchmarks ?
This makes sense, pa semi were working on VERY power efficient designs before the acquisition, they were however not compatible with OS X.
According to him, there's nothing from "ARM licensees or Intel that could challenge the power-per-watt, the power-per-buck, the power-per-cubic-millimeter of size,"
Yah.... so it's a SoC built with an ARM core, but magically, it easily beats other ARM based SoCs in what ARM cores do best? Unless Apple now has a license to defy the laws of physics, I'm going to call BS. The semiconductor industry is nothing like the software or consumer hardware industries. Things like this take years to develop, and it requires a close and long term relationship with companies like ARM and PowerVR.
It's honestly seems like a lot of consulting firms are transforming into advertising firms. They just spew crap.
@M3 .. you ignorant moron. Go read up on your history. In the late 1980's Apple helped ARM develop new versions and recently they purchased PA Semiconductor who was founded by the lead designer for StrongARM. Apple also owns upwards of 10% of ImgTec who make PowerVR. So yes Apple has ALL the pieces of the puzzle to do this.
@M3
I agree, semiconductor is not marketing or banking science, unless Samsung is now magically capable of manufacturing chips better than market leaders, Apple SoC-thing could only be a potpourri of existing tech. The only thing is they do pretty cool potpourris than can sell at a legit premium
Those bankers and their silly options market...
@M3: "It's honestly seems like a lot of consulting firms are transforming into advertising firms. They just spew crap."
+1
Still, I don't doubt Apple's working on something, but it's not going to be a game changer. It just seems the hyperbolic Dick Doh didn't see any of the Snapdragon and Tegra 2 powered devices at CES this year when he wrote his piece.
@M3
I agree with you. I'm not doubting Apple or P.A. Semi's ability but they are a smaller department with less R&D funds with less at stake then ARM manufacturers such as, Nvidia, Samsung, Qualcomm,etc, and non-ARM based manufacturers such as Intel, AMD all of which have giant R&D departments with huge budgets and a lot of money at stake. I just can't believe a small department of Apple made up of a relatively small number of engineers has any more brains or is any more innovative then the infinitely larger collective number of engineers in the same field. I could be wrong, they could have stumbled across something and created something superior. But at the probability is not in Apple's favour and at the moment this analyst seems to be full of hot air.
@taligent
I suggest you take your history and get a reality check.
History means nothing when you're limited by reality. You think TI, Samsung, Motorola, and the hundreds of other small firms, like PA Semiconductor, developing SoCs are stupid? SoCs are limited in their power profile by their CPU. You can't take an ARM CPU design, make a SoC from it, and magically have it consume less power then the ARM CPU.
Btw, StrongARM was a popular platform because of Intel, not the SoCs themselves. So maybe your history is a bit shoddy as well.
Secondly, owning stock in a company is not some magical means to obtain IP. You can be a parent company and even then Licensing terms have to be properly and legally followed.
When the tablet is finally revealed next week I am going to miss all the crazy rumours it has spawned ...what will we all chatter about then?
@CloudHippy
Are you kidding? The Frenzy won't let up until this thing is in stores in March. We got a long way to go.
Just wait, the PC fanboys will claim that whatever Jobs does on stage is 'just a Demo, and won't be that good in real life'
Oh yeah, then we have iPhone rumours until the Summer.
It's Apple. They tend to freak people out.
@Atkins
Walking? hmm ...I don't think I have the right plug-in for doing that.
@Wesscoast
You're right of course. I've even heard rumours that there might be more rumours to follow it's release...they're just rumours at this point though.
Not only does this make me happy, it also makes me particularly angry that the 27th Jan isnt here yet...
Is it the 27th yet? :|
More like, a chip built by Samsung and designed by P.A. Semi to be a closed system by switching around the wires in someone else's design.
I wonder if this means Apple will take (or have already taken) a Cortex A8 or A9 reference design, and built a SoC around it, of if they actually made their OWN processor design around the ARM architecture.
This is exactly what I speculated to my dad just a few minutes ago (before reading this story) with regards to Intel's stock in relation to Apple's tablet.