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A Closer Look at Apple's A7 Chip from the iPhone 5s
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wow. the size of the static ram is shocking. TouchID is very expensive to implement it looks like..
Manufactured by, not designed by. And yes, Apple have permission to use ARM's architecture, but what they're designing with that is incredible.
And I merely implied it was a stepping stone to something great. Of course, they are still at the mercy of other manufacturers. However it's indisputable that this step will only become bigger.
Yes, it's an Apple design which is usually what people would call "an Apple chip" because the design (blueprint) is really what matters as for how the chip will perform. AMD aren't building their chips either, yet we call an AMD processor exactly that.
TSMC is apparently signed for A8, A9, A9X production. A9X. I can only imagine...
I can't see any reason the TouchID would use a chunk of static RAM - apart from anything else, that consumes power constantly just to keep the contents intact, the last thing you want in a phone! Moreover, it's right next to the graphics cores - much more likely it's some sort of dedicated graphics-memory cache or framebuffer.
Is it just a coincidence that the whole iPhone 5S screen contents - at 32 bits per pixel - will be ... 2.9 Mbytes? That makes a whole lot more sense than storing fingerprint data in there (which is rarely used, and would have to be saved to the off-chip flash memory anyway to be preserved when the chip is powered down).
I can only agree with others here praising Apple's "A series".
This has been one big, successful project that just seems to keep on giving.
I bought my iPhone 5 and thought it had more processing power than I would need for at least the year to come, and I still think it has more than it "needs" to. And then they release the 5s which is 2x as fast... I'm almost like "Wait you don't need to push ahead this fast?"
It's as if they're making CPU's faster than I think they even need to, just because this project is so fruitful, even in pushing down costs. Just because they can.
This has been one big, successful project that just seems to keep on giving.
I bought my iPhone 5 and thought it had more processing power than I would need for at least the year to come, and I still think it has more than it "needs" to. And then they release the 5s which is 2x as fast... I'm almost like "Wait you don't need to push ahead this fast?"
It's as if they're making CPU's faster than I think they even need to, just because this project is so fruitful, even in pushing down costs. Just because they can.
Makes a lot of sense now. Since I'm not familiar with it, those guys were beginning to question my thoughts on who actually owns this chip design.
No. Just because Samsung manufactures the chip doesn't mean they own it (I presume you mean the chip's design).
Foxconn makes/assembles the iPhone and they sure as heck don't "own" the iPhone.
Re: your second point ("they [Samsung] are innovative")
Well... I guess that would depend on who you ask. ;-)
Apple has alway done its own custom silicon to varying degrees. Even 20 years ago, there were Apple-branded chips in Macs, such as "system controllers" and sound processing chips. And Apple was also a direct participant in the PowerPC effort, until that hit a brick wall, so they switched to an Intel-based architecture.
Samsung are innovative, just as innovative as apple. What they lack is refinement. They'll make a phone, throw in everything including the kitchen sink and see what sticks. It may not necessarily even work well, and some may even consider it beta-grade.
Apple on the other hand see what's available and try and massage it seamlessly and meaningfully into their product. Not everything works but usually the experience is a pleasant one, even if they're rehashing what's out there, it's done in a way that's useful and meaningful to people buying their product.
All top agencies have fountains in their lobbies: http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154864/the-thinking-side#searchterm=fountain
This. This is true innovation that is more than skin deep. I'm not aware of any company demonstrating more innovation in this sector. IMO, Apple is also winning the beauty contest in the hardware wars.
It shows incredible dedication and pure genius when a consumer electronics company creates a dual-core mobile processor that rivals Intel's and Qualcomm's quad-core offerings 
Samsung WISHES they could design a decent CPU. They just grab crap off the shelf designed by qualcomm for their phones.
What they reported is wrong. Static ram is very fast memory that does not require a dynamic refresh every so often to keep the contents alive, which means very fast reads and writes.
SRAM loses its content on powerless just like traditional cheaper dynamic ram.
That would be a massive waste of SRAM. The fingerprint data is gonna be stored in a small section of non volatile memory.
That big 3meg SRAM is probably another reason why the a7 is so fast.
Do you guys have any idea what a static RAM array is? ##. It isn't non volatile storage.