“When Apple Inc unveiled its iPad last month, one crucial detail almost got drowned out in the hoopla: the new tablet computer will be powered by an in-house chip called the A4,” Ian Sherr reports for Reuters.
“While Apple likely will not market the chip publicly, analysts say the new processor underscores how rival chip designs may eventually win out over Intel Corp’s designs in the emergent hot category of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets,” Sherr reports.
“But analysts point to an uphill battle against Nvidia Corp, Marvell and Qualcomm Inc, already making headway with cheaper, low-power processors based on designs by ARM Holdings PLC,” Sherr reports. “‘They (Intel) don’t have a track record in delivering these types of chips,’ said Wedbush Morgan analyst Patrick Wang. ‘They haven’t been successful in the past, and they’re trying to get in.'”
“Not much is known of the A4 — the brainchild of Apple design teams including recently acquired PA Semi — except that it gives the iPad a long battery life and is considered comparable to rival processors in both speed and performance,” Sherr reports. “That Apple went its own way illustrates how specialized chip design may be more suitable for the burgeoning mobile market than Intel’s do-everything approach.”
Sherr reports, “Intel-based tablet laptops have been sold without huge success for nearly a decade. Apple uses Intel chips in its Macintosh personal computers and servers… But just as Apple shunned Intel for the iPad, most tablet and smartphone manufacturers have chosen to build products containing ARM-based products… That includes Apple, whose self-designed A4 is rumored to be included in the next iPhone, expected this summer.”
Full article here.
It will also nip counterfeit iPad/iPhone/iPods touch in the bud!
iPhone OS is Apple’s chance to start over and slowly displace Macintosh with something more secure, more profitable, and more popular.
Macs will stay Intel-powered, otherwise the PPC->Intel transition would have to happen all over again. And it would eliminate Windows compatibility.
What will happen is Apple will expand and expand iOS products to the point that Macintosh is no longer vital. Jobs said this years ago.
Hopefully this will inspire Intel to actually dig deep into thier considerablly secret high quality tech files and build those chips that will be used in the Terminators, and the Starship Enterprise.
Cause if they don’t, Apple will.
Apple differentiated their products using software. The competition could create somewhat comparable hardware, but could not replicate Apple’s software (in large part because they became so reliant on Microsoft and then Google). BUT NOW, Apple can differentiated their products with both software and hardware. And it will be much easier for Apple to maintain their lead in mobile devices. Apple’s strategic decision-making is simply brilliant.
Intel is just colladeral damage.
This move is about preventing the copycats from following too close, or at least getting an easy time of it.
This goes for Googlesoft, who hid there plans well as they sat as a double agent on the Apple board.
@DX
The transition to Intel from PPC chips hasn’t been unique in Apple history. In 1995 Apple switched from Motorolla to PPC chips. The use of PPC chips only lasted about 10 years. Apple have now been using Intel processors for about 4 years now.
Going back to this iPad-headed-iMac idea… we’ve been talking about a Mac mini-like-base with possibly a detachable screen, and the possibility that when removed the screen becomes a big iPad with an Apple chip…
But I’m wondering, is there any reason the touchscreen part can’t communicate wirelessly and still use that more powerful (and power hunger) desktop chip?
In other words, could you have full computing power anywhere on your LAN? Do you think this is feasible?
‘power hungry’ that is.
DX sez: “iPhone OS is Apple’s chance to start over and slowly displace Macintosh with something more secure, more profitable, and more popular. . . . What will happen is Apple will expand and expand iOS products to the point that Macintosh is no longer vital. Jobs said this years ago.”
No no no. You’re off in another dimension of space and time.
Computers, as we know them now, will continue to progress onward into the future forever (or until the loonies nuke the planet).
What is happening now, and has been happening for several years, is the emergence of the “Consumer Appliance” in the form of iPods, iPhones and the iPad. The are computer powered, but the computer is deliberately hidden and inaccessible to the user. This sort of computer aided device will be massive and will travel its own course into the future.
To say the Mac will be ‘displaced’ is ridiculous except in the sense that its market share will undoubtedly decline in favor of the simplistic Consumer Appliance devices that appeal to non-techy-geeky-coding serious computer users.
To say that someday the Mac, which I equate with ‘computer’, will no longer be vital, is again crazy. You don’t comprehend just how SIMPLISTIC the iPad is and the particular market it is aimed for. Power users of ANY kind will NEVER find any Consumer Appliance even remotely adequate for their tasks or interests.
I do hope this noise of confusion regarding the iPad dies down. I am getting extremely tired of having to distinguish the difference between the iPad and a full computer to folks over and over and over and over ad nauseam.
:-Q*********
@ChrissyOne
“But I’m wondering, is there any reason the touchscreen part can’t communicate wirelessly and still use that more powerful (and power hunger) desktop chip?”
I’ve (!) been hoping for this ever since the first hints of the iPad surfaced..
Wireless tablet sucking the juice from the Mac Mini and screen sharing “the Appla way”
just hoping..
Regarding the A4, it frees Apple from having to use the wimpy Intel Atom chips that are used in wimpy netbooks. It gives Apple some leverage with Intel. It provides competition in the marketplace, which is of course required in order to drive innovation. Apple can also now directly tweak their chips for any hardware based features they want without having to play begging games at Intel’s door. Apple’s line of Consumer Appliances can be entirely free of any reference to anything PC, anything Intel, anything Microsoft. That’s a great future ahead.
Intel’s monopoly on CPU technology is what we call a BAD THING. The sooner we have high quality alternatives, (and AMD is NOT much of an alternative as it is still based on Intel PC technology) the sooner we can move on to better-than-Intel CPU chips and better CPU driven devices.
@ Derek Currie
You lack vision. Apple is trying to get the computer out of your way. Any amount of machinery between me and my task is too much machinery.
I don’t want to sit next to a big metal box. I want to make photos, websites, and, music and stories.
Computers will progress, alright. They’re just going to go in a direction you can’t quite fathom yet.
@Derek Curie
Derek is wrong. We’ve had tons of great CPU alternatives for years.
Also, the “computer” is old hat. We just need to do things. To say we need a “real” computer is like those Linux geeks that say the Mac is too easy to use and that a Linux box is a “real” computer (because if you don’t use a command line then you’re not really a power user; or if you don’t know how to compile your own binaries then you’re not really tailoring the computer to the most optimal usage).
Remember the Apple “Intel Pentium Snail” commercials
….. here
Apple will take the chance to develop a whole Cortex A9 chip family specialized for the need of each device. This will give them the hardware advantage they need in the field of strong competition.
For the ipad Apple need as much CPU performance as possible to be competitive with INTEL ATOM devices and 4 times the GPU speed of an iPhone to serve the larger display. 3G is only optional so an integrated basebandchip is not very likely. Power is not such an issue because of the much larger battery.
So for me its very clear, that we never find the A4 in an iphone because Apple has the posibility to do much better.
@ ChrissyOne;
You lack, how’s the nice way to put this, any understanding at all of the state of technology.
There is not, nor will there be in the foreseeable future, any way in hell a mobile device is capable of replacing a “big metal box” (8 core + CPU’s coupled with dedicated GPU’s and a pair of 30″ monitors) to perform “real work”.
Please don’t tell me we’d have 100 mpg gasoline powered family sedans if only for the Big Three’s conspiracy, or I’ll apply what appeared to be your logic to the state of mechanical engineering!
@ Moo
You must have really boring dreams.
Don’t worry. You’ll still be able to buy those giant metal boxes for all that Real Work™. The rest of us will be walking around.
@Moo, your comment clearly shows that you miss the point of what ChrissyOne was making. The point is: my 10 year old son, 70 year old grandmother, or computer illiterate best friend could care less about an 8 core, big shiny monster box. The future is about people like THEM, not people like you and me. The world will always have geeks, but the mainstream computing device of tomorrow will not be aimed at them.
@ Moo
As you can see, GeeOne has that Vision thing.
Sorry but MDN is very wrong. Intel is a new commer and an underdog in CPU for handhelds. Ipad a4 will make no dent in intel’s business.
Comments that a4 is manufactured by intel are ridiculous: intel does not manufacture other’s designs.
Likely tsmc or other house is doing it. Which means tha it’s at least 2 technology generations behind intel. But again intel is not competing with a4 but rather both a4 and intel are trying to get foot in this field from the big players.
A4 is nothing special and not danger to anyone … yet. This is first design and in couple of generations Apple could be a competitor but not now.
A4 is just yet-another-ARM-based-SoC which is most likely single core type (no multi tasking). It’s likely 45nm and done in Asia.
The significance of a4 is that it’s design is done in- house (tight loop between architecture of SoC and SW). That means that others can’t just buy it or copy it soon. This can be huge advantage if ipad sells spiral up.
If ipad sells, the a4 design team will grow and future chips can be very interesting. …
What good is this A4 chip if I can’t listen to Pandora while surfing the Web at the same time?
@palaver;
The A4 is not meant to be competitive by selling it to all comers. It is meant to be competitive in the sense that Apple will use IT instead of Intel or others’ chips. In THAT sense, it IS competitive, since Apple uses huge numbers of these parts, due to consumer demand.
So it does threaten chip makers, by taking Apple out of the chip market and making the chip makers lose Apple as a customer.
It also allows Apple to prevent close competitiveness by rivals by preventing them from being able to use the same chip to duplicate function in rival devices to Apple’s product lines.
Kills two birds with one stone, so to speak.
One thing that excites me about the iPad is that it is a new kind of interface between me and my information and the things that I am trying to accomplish. The built-in capabilities are nice, but it doesn’t really matter to me how much computing horsepower it has or whether it can render video edits or host a huge database if it can somehow give me remote access to something that CAN do those things.
I do like the image of semi-computers taking over on the border of “serious” computers and “non-computers”. We’d still use a keyboard and mouse because it’s easier, but we COULD just swipe the screen-cum-computer if that worked well for us. And what would this ‘tween-box do for us? About anything a console computer does today, or an iPhone, or what the iPad will do next quarter. It can also be linked to a “serious” computer … “elsewhere” … and act as the “screen”.
One question might be, would this create an expansion of “cloud computing”, where processing – as well as storage – becomes a commodity? Taking the more complex processing off the local system would greatly ease the hardware requirements there.