Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
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Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
1–10 of 18 posts
Re: Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
#2How long does a contract to supply silicon usually last?
Re: Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
#3It would be interesting to know what the politics inside Samsung are vis-a-vis the dispute with Apple. It's hard to believe that the silicon people were thrilled with the mobile division kicking sand in their biggest customer's face. If Samsung's mobile division gets a little bit bigger and their components business gets a little bit smaller, is this a net-win for them?
Re: Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
#4It would be interesting to know what the politics inside Samsung are vis-a-vis the dispute with Apple. It's hard to believe that the silicon people were thrilled with the mobile division kicking sand in their biggest customer's face. If Samsung's mobile division gets a little bit bigger and their components business gets a little bit smaller, is this a net-win for them?
I wonder what Samsung's long-extant mobile division thought of Samsung's silicon division getting in bed with a competitor?
Re: Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
#5It would be interesting to know what the politics inside Samsung are vis-a-vis the dispute with Apple. It's hard to believe that the silicon people were thrilled with the mobile division kicking sand in their biggest customer's face. If Samsung's mobile division gets a little bit bigger and their components business gets a little bit smaller, is this a net-win for them?
I wonder what Samsung's long-extant mobile division thought of Samsung's silicon division getting in bed with a competitor?
"Business as usual."
Re: Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
#6How long does a contract to supply silicon usually last?
Varies pretty heavily and could be many years. Check all the wrangling when Apple bought P.A. Semi. The DoD contracts can go on for more than a decade.
Re: Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
#7Corporations as large as both of them really do not care.
Greed for profits overrides any "pride". Happens all the time.
Google is still paying Mozilla millions for home page links right?
Re: Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
#8i remember reading that apple tended to financially help companies set up new fabs/equipment/whatever in exchange for fairly long term contracts. For example, when they do a die-shrink, apple might pay 30% of the cost to upgrade the fab, in exchange for preferred (in terms of quality and price) chips for X years. No source, too lazy.
Re: Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
#9It's an ARM core on a chip manufactured by Samsung (i.e. not a Samsung core).
Also, if the "A5 is SoC including RAM", then the RAM is on the same piece of silicon as the ARM core (for it to be SoC). Not sure how it's possible for Samsung to make part of the silicon (for the core) and someone else to make the RAM. Perhaps the RAM isn't on the A5 after all ;-)
There's no risk in Apple switching manufacturers (e.g. Samsung Nexus uses a TI OMAP SoC CPU, instead of a Samsung Exynos for the Galaxy S II). Switching to Intel is the massive risk, since they don't use ARM cores at all, so the O/S would require a rewrite.
Finally, the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture isn't aimed at lower power computing (Intel Atom chips are based on the Bonnell microarchitecture), so there's unlikely be 3D transistor technology...
Apple's real move would be to drop the A6 entirely and focus on the same CPU's used by Android, since the both Android and Apple are using ARM V7 instruction sets with Cortex A9 cores.
Re: Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S
#10It's an ARM core on a chip manufactured by Samsung (i.e. not a Samsung core). Also, if the "A5 is SoC including RAM", then the RAM is on the same piece of silicon as the ARM core (for it to be SoC). Not sure how it's possible for Samsung to make part of the silicon (for the core) and someone else to make the RAM. Perhaps the RAM isn't on the A5 after all ;-) There's no risk in Apple switching manufacturers (e.g. Sams…
> Switching to Intel is the massive risk, since they don't use ARM cores at all, so the O/S would require a rewrite
I think the idea behind the Intel rumour is that Intel would 'just' be a fab in this scenario. They would license the ARM tech and fab the A6, so the story goes...