Apple’s failure to build a key part for its new iPhones
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Re: Apple’s failure to build a key part for its new iPhones
#2Paywalled
Re: Apple’s failure to build a key part for its new iPhones
#3Re: Apple’s failure to build a key part for its new iPhones
#4[deleted]
Re: Apple’s failure to build a key part for its new iPhones
#5What’s the fundamental reason why SOTA modems are more challenging than microprocessors for Apple? Intuitively I would’ve guessed the opposite was true.
Re: Apple’s failure to build a key part for its new iPhones
#6What’s the fundamental reason why SOTA modems are more challenging than microprocessors for Apple? Intuitively I would’ve guessed the opposite was true.
I would guess lack of expertise? Apple purchased PA Semi a while ago and the team went on to work on their processors. Have they purchased a company specialized in mixed-signal circuit design? That's one of the key differences, a modem contains a lot of analog circuitry and analog is very different from digital.
Re: Apple’s failure to build a key part for its new iPhones
#7Re: Apple’s failure to build a key part for its new iPhones
#8Paywalled
Reminder: If you have Apple News (or get it bundled with Apple One), it includes access to the Wall Street Journal among many other paywalled sources. On iOS you can use the share sheet to open the URL in news and it will auto-open it. Otherwise you can search for the title.
I do wish this feature was better integrated, and using the share sheet to open with any app including News seems always confusing - you're never sure if you have to scroll the list of icons or scroll the list of names, or edit it to add it to both lists, and different apps seem to appear in both lists in different contexts.
But it works well when it works :D
Re: Apple’s failure to build a key part for its new iPhones
#9What’s the fundamental reason why SOTA modems are more challenging than microprocessors for Apple? Intuitively I would’ve guessed the opposite was true.
IMO cellular network protocols are remarkably challenging to understand. Then you add to that various quirks of certain network operators, optimal power consumption and throughput, security.
They probably want their design to work as well as the baseline one, and globally.
Re: Apple’s failure to build a key part for its new iPhones
#10What’s the fundamental reason why SOTA modems are more challenging than microprocessors for Apple? Intuitively I would’ve guessed the opposite was true.
I would guess lack of expertise? Apple purchased PA Semi a while ago and the team went on to work on their processors. Have they purchased a company specialized in mixed-signal circuit design? That's one of the key differences, a modem contains a lot of analog circuitry and analog is very different from digital.
PA Semi was 2008 or so, and Intrinsity in 2009-10. In both cases they came with (more or less) working products, an existing relationship, and coherent engineering teams with an active development pipeline. Its fair to say the intel modem folks have a lot of that individually, but Im not clear how much of the whole transferred over.
Edit: and the HwEng org already had established VLSI, SoC, and PCB groups shipping products before those acquisitions happened.