http://seekingalpha.com/article/858041-the-iphone-5-technology-rabbit-hole
What could possibly have caused Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 5 to fall fifteen months behind schedule? A slip-up in a recent Apple patent application might provide the answer - and the investment opportunity of a lifetime.
I call US Patent Application 20120185797 to the stand. While the assignee of this patent is not listed, it should be obvious from the content that it is Apple (e.g. - the inventors work for Apple, there is an Apple copyright, several mentions of iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc).
This is a pretty boring patent app with one exception: the mention of "phase change memory" or PCM, a next-generation memory that has the potential to displace flash and DRAM memory types with dramatic power-efficiency. Now, it is important to note that PCM is listed in many of Apple's other patents. But these mentions always been in conjunction with the other leading next-gen memory types (which is a typical patent strategy). In this particular application, it is listed exclusively alongside the traditional memory technology incumbents - RAM, ROM and flash.
If the iPhone 5 uses PCM, then it will have breathtaking processing power with incredible energy efficiency - handheld panacea.
PCM, however, has the non-volatile characteristics of flash memory and the effective speed of DRAM memory. So, once an application is loaded into PCM, it never needs to be loaded again - even after power has been removed from the underlying memory. The application will always be in the state that it was in when it was last executed. So instead of supplying continuous battery power to the Facebook application, for example, PCM allows the phone to simply power-up the underlying memory once or twice a minute so that it can check for new activity. PCM-enabled phones will sip battery instead of guzzle. This is applicable for the operating system as well. After PCM, "booting up" will be a story that we tell to the grandchildren.
What could possibly have caused Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 5 to fall fifteen months behind schedule? A slip-up in a recent Apple patent application might provide the answer - and the investment opportunity of a lifetime.
I call US Patent Application 20120185797 to the stand. While the assignee of this patent is not listed, it should be obvious from the content that it is Apple (e.g. - the inventors work for Apple, there is an Apple copyright, several mentions of iPhone, iPad, Mac, etc).
This is a pretty boring patent app with one exception: the mention of "phase change memory" or PCM, a next-generation memory that has the potential to displace flash and DRAM memory types with dramatic power-efficiency. Now, it is important to note that PCM is listed in many of Apple's other patents. But these mentions always been in conjunction with the other leading next-gen memory types (which is a typical patent strategy). In this particular application, it is listed exclusively alongside the traditional memory technology incumbents - RAM, ROM and flash.
If the iPhone 5 uses PCM, then it will have breathtaking processing power with incredible energy efficiency - handheld panacea.
PCM, however, has the non-volatile characteristics of flash memory and the effective speed of DRAM memory. So, once an application is loaded into PCM, it never needs to be loaded again - even after power has been removed from the underlying memory. The application will always be in the state that it was in when it was last executed. So instead of supplying continuous battery power to the Facebook application, for example, PCM allows the phone to simply power-up the underlying memory once or twice a minute so that it can check for new activity. PCM-enabled phones will sip battery instead of guzzle. This is applicable for the operating system as well. After PCM, "booting up" will be a story that we tell to the grandchildren.
