Apple inside: the significance of the iPad's A4 chip

#1 Macworld

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 06:30 AM

Post your comments for Apple inside: the significance of the iPad's A4 chip here

#2 Maxer

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 06:37 AM

How many cores inside? Thanks.

#3 flybynight

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 07:00 AM

Thanks for that last line, Uncle Ben.

#4 Cloudmover

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 07:14 AM

I bet 2012 MacBooks are going to be running some type of A X chip. Interesting times...

flybynight, on 29 January 2010 - 07:00 AM, said:

Thanks for that last line, Uncle Ben.

LOL

#5 Luis_Alejandro

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 07:15 AM

quote:
"An Apple that possesses firm control of every component of its devices has the potential for greatness—but with great power comes great responsibility."

During almost all the Macintosh lifetime, IT depts and enterprises had the "excuse" of not buying Macs because of the "sole provider."

This is not the case here, but I would say: "--but with great power comes great risk,"

(Disclaimer: As the sole decision maker on my hard/soft... "I do take thar risk!")

#6 moose_n_squirrel

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 07:19 AM

Quote

That's how prices remain low, and why IBM doesn't produce every single component of the PC all by itself.

Of course IBM doesn't do that. They don't even sell the PC anymore. What year was this article written?

#7 KPOM

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 07:30 AM

Luis_Alejandro, on 29 January 2010 - 07:15 AM, said:

The significance here is that if Apple has designed the processor and GPU, written the operating system, and designed the rest of the hardware, they could optimize their own applications to take advantage of undocumented features and attempt to snuff out competition in the application market. That's exactly what Microsoft was accused of doing in the Netscape lawsuit (and they did not design the processor or rest of the hardware). The difference, of course, is that Apple is not in a monopoly position in PCs or mobile devices.

#8 joebot

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 07:42 AM

The other difference, of course, is that Apple makes its money selling hardware, not software, so they have no incentive to undercut their competitors in the application space.
This is a smart move for Apple for their mobile devices, but I don't see it spilling over to the Mac. For one thing, the fact that Macs use Intel processors has been a major driver in their skyrocketing sales since 2006. For another, it would put them in direct competition with Intel, which has way more money to throw at general-purpose processor development and is already serving exactly the market that Apple is in, and there's no chance that Intel is going to stray from that market the way that IBM and Freescale did.

#9 jadco

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 07:51 AM

It wouldn’t be in Apple’s best interests to follow Microsoft and "take advantage of undocumented features and attempt to snuff out competition in the application market". The company is far more diversified than Microsoft was when it began (around 1990) its early anti-competitive activities. Then, Microsoft relied solely on software and had one of the greedier CEO’s since the trust-busting days of the early 20th century. Apple doesn’t fit that picture.

#10 daijones

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 07:54 AM

Cloudmover, on 29 January 2010 - 07:14 AM, said:

I bet 2012 MacBooks are going to be running some type of A X chip. Interesting times...

Will not, cannot happen. While MacOSX could be recompiled for the A4, it takes considerably more power than the iPhone OS and would run like a dog. Applications could be recompiled for A4, but the same is true and everyone would have to get new versions of their apps. Apple have been very good at moving to new processor platforms, by using virtualisation to handle legacy software. But, that has always involved migrating to a more powerful architecture, with enough overhead to cope with the demands of emulating the legacy chip. The A4 is impressive, but it is nowhere near powerful enough to emulate a Core 2 Duo, say; and it's very unlikely that any development of the ARM family will be able to do so in the foreseeable future.

#11 daijones

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 07:58 AM

BTW, the BSN article linked to is speculative bull, pure link bait. No one knows what's in the A4, except that it must be an ARM architecture to allow running iPhone apps. The best publicly known ARM architecture at the mo is the Cortex A9, but I doubt that Apple would just use that off the shelf. It's likely that the A4 has some PA Semi inspired improvement on the architecture. Re the number of cores, again no one knows but you'd have to guess at at least two, possibly four. I like the thought of four, since that gives the name some meaning. It also allows for a two core A2 variant to go in the next iPhone

#12 kevinv

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Posted 29 January 2010 - 08:04 AM

Yeah I'm not seeing the A4 in MacBooks or other general purpose computers anytime soon. Intel Core chips have a benefit in that the volume of the entire market pc+mac allows them to charge a cheaper price, a lot cheaper. I don't think Apple could match that price producing chips just for it's general purpose computers.

The mobile/appliance market is completely different. Custom chips in this area can really dominate and you can make back the extra investment in design/fabrication based on those benefits.

I think in the immediate future we'll see A4 type chips (and different speeds for different heat issues) in the Apple TV, iPod Touch and iPhone and that's it.