An Intrinsity Chip Powers the iPad and Apple's New A4 Processor

[Jacquesass]

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/winner-intrinsitys-more-cerebral-cortex/0

For those having trouble following along at home:

1) ARM designs chips. These are complete chip designs. ARM does not have fabrication plants (fabs), so they license out the "blueprints" for how to make the ARM chips. Different designs have different capabilities (original iPhone/3G = ARM11, iPhone 3GS = ARM Cortex-A8).

2) Licensees have paid ARM to receive a license to these chip designs. The license can include the opportunity to customize the ARM standard design (i.e., architectural license) or not. Qualcomm used their architectural license to completetly redesign the Cortex-A8 to make the Snapdragon chip. Intrinsity has a proprietary "special sauce" called Fast14 that it has used to speed up the Cortex-A8 design from 650MHz to 1GHz; it isn't clear if they needed an architectural license to do that. Apple is also an ARM licensee, and it is speculated that the A4 is missing some unused functions to save power (which might require an architectural license).

3) Chips are made in fabs; if you don't design the chips you fab, you are a foundry. Neither Apple nor Intrinsity have fabs; Samsung, TI and Intel have fabs; AMD spun off their fabs into Global Foundries. Samsung is an ARM licensee and has fabbed the previous ARM chips used in the iPhone; dissection of the iPad shows that Samsung fabbed the Apple A4. Intrinsity has also licensed their tweaked Cortex-A8 to Samsung, which is sold as the Samsung Hummingbird. People have postulated (as they seem very similar given what we actually know) that the Apple A4 is a Samsung Hummingbird.

To summarize: Apple, Intrinsity and Samsung all are licensees of ARM's processor designs. Samsung fabs ARM chips unchanged (this is what the iPhone has used). Intrinsity has tweaked the Cortex-A8 to run at 1Ghz and licensed that design to Samsung. Apple is now using an "in-house" chip that looks amazingly similar to the Intrinsity design (i.e., Samsung Hummingbird) that was also fabbed at Samsung. Apple just bought Intrinsity.

I think that the most interesting part of the article at the top is this quote: "And if a company decides to add that extra year of design time [to design their own chip], by the time it goes to market it could find itself facing other smartphones powered by ARM’s dual-core next-generation Cortex-A9—it’s rated at 2 GHz and expected as soon as mid-2010. (Remember, Intrinsity is now hard at work souping up that A9.)"

If Intrinsity can make the Cortex-A9 (dual-core, 2GHz) even faster while staying as power-efficient, future iPhones/iPods/iPads are going to scream.

 

[gnasher729]

"Such an effort is said ... to take billions of dollars". Who says that? Tell me who said it, and I can tell you that someone is a total idiot.

Edit: Seems the quote has since been removed from the article.

 

[*LTD*]

Can someone explain to me WHY this is good news? Aren't they basically saying that they put a second rate processor in iPhone/iPad but having NOW bought a ''better'' manufacturer so that future products will have the better chip?

Who cares what powers the iPad/iPhone. How does the damn thing run? Fast? Smooth?

Good. That's all that matters. No one really gives a sweet damn what's under the hood. The User Experience, however, is all.

 

[kresh]

I'm not even a layman in the field, so I doubt I am right but it looks like the P.A. Semi purchase did not work out that well and Apple purchased Intrinsity to achieve their goals.

It seems like the employees of Intrinsity are actually staying with Apple while all of the important P.A. Semi people fled after the purchase. Everyone attributed those that left as just being the start up people, and so on, but now I am not so sure.

 

[SteveSparks]

If Intrinsity can make the Cortex-A9 (dual-core, 2GHz) even faster while staying as power-efficient, future iPhones/iPods/iPads are going to scream.

Having grown up in Austin, and had lots of family in the memory and microprocessor design, and fabrication process. This is really cool stuff.

These guys take sand and turn it into something that on 1.0v of power can do some amazing things. That being said, the guys that can take the ARM design and add functions that do more faster are really smart dudes. The ARM designers, as smart or smarter.

I worked for company that designed its own microcontroller, pretty intrestring process for techies.

As for why we should care? These CPU's are faster and use less power than anything ever.

 

[powers74]

Apple.

You just never know for sure.

 

[mex4eric]

I don't understand.. How can Apple claim that the A4 was made "in-house", when it was actually a Samsung chip designed by Intrinsity?

I'm also wondering when the PA Semi people will actually make something

Steve has always said he buys companies for their knowledge and specifically for their engineers. Now they can have Intrinsity and PA Semi engineers working together in the same group on new chips rather than competing with each other.

 

[cmaier]

Maybe the morons who keep claiming A4 is a powerpc chip emulating ARM will go away now. Fast14 logic explains the increases core area as well.

 

[kresh]

Maybe the morons who keep claiming A4 is a powerpc chip emulating ARM will go away now. Fast14 logic explains the increases core area as well.

I wondered when you would chime in, I thoroughly enjoy your posts on processor related topics. Well other topics as well

 

[cmaier]

I wondered when you would chime in, I thoroughly enjoy your posts on processor related topics. Well other topics as well

Sorry for the lag - it's 6:30 am and I just woke up

Steve has always said he buys companies for their knowledge and specifically for their engineers. Now they can have Intrinsity and PA Semi engineers working together in the same group on new chips rather than competing with each other.

Since intrinsity is in Texas, I think it more likely that they will work on different projects (or at least different SoC blocks). The PA semi guys will probably own any custom blocks and the intrinsity folks will own anything synthesized, for example.

 

[retroneo]

I'm not even a layman in the field, so I doubt I am right but it looks like the P.A. Semi purchase did not work out that well

Apple may have just purchased PA Semi for its patent portfolio. I'm sure if Apple really wanted the engineers to stay they would have offered them a sweeter deal.

 

[cmaier]

Apple may have just purchased PA Semi for its patent portfolio. I'm sure if Apple really wanted the engineers to stay they would have offered them a sweeter deal.

Most of the engineers stayed.

 

[mahashel]

Regardless of specific application, it's really exciting to watch what's going on in the mobility-processing space. While server/desktop proc manufacturers appear to be bent on simply cramming more cores into the die as the fab processes continue to shrink feature sizes, we see real creativity surrounding the processors used in these smaller devices.
As performance continues to increase without severely impacting battery life, we'll obviously see more and more devices emerge that will challenge the paradigm shift "magic" of the iPad. Tasks where "it's just easier to use a mouse" will become fewer and fewer as these devices become more capable.
It's a brave new world.

 

[thelatinist]

As I understand it, both PA Semi and Intrinsity are companies that make ARM processor designs better. PA Semi makes ARM chips use less power, while Intrinsity makes them faster. Both of these are desirable qualities in a mobile processor. By purchasing both of these companies (and their talent and patent portfolios), Apple hopes to be able to design really fast ARM processors that sip electricity. How much of each of these companies' tech is in the A4 processor we will probably never know, but we can be sure that Apple's next processor will be a full collaboration incorporating the best of both companies.

 

[Cycom]

If Intrinsity can make the Cortex-A9 (dual-core, 2GHz) even faster while staying as power-efficient, future iPhones/iPods/iPads are going to scream.

Holy ****! Dual-core, 2Ghz in a mobile is just insane. I have a Nokia N900 with an ARM Cortex A8 (which I'm going to OC to 800Mhz soon) which is really fast. I can't imagine how awesome the A9 is going to be

 

[SandynJosh]

"Such an effort is said ... to take billions of dollars". Who says that? Tell me who said it, and I can tell you that someone is a total idiot.

The quote you are struggling to find a name for was, "...up to a billion dollars", not "billions." So any amount UNDER a billion was the amount in the quote, not several billion.

To answer your request for a name: You said it, not someone else.

 

[Cheffy Dave]

Sweet

All I know is, my iPad is wicked fast, with ZERO WiFi issues. Use it for 80% of my computing needs, especially delightful streaming NetFlix and watching Leo on Twit padvery

 

[MSUSpartan]

I don't understand.. How can Apple claim that the A4 was made "in-house", when it was actually a Samsung chip designed by Intrinsity?

Apple claims a lot of stuff. All New Macbook Pros on their websites in March 2010, server grade HDDs in Time Capsules...etc.

 

[swissmann]

Blah blah blah...cutting to the chase....my iPad is lightning fast...I really don't care if it's this chip or that chip or a Pringle or Gnome in there...it works, it's fast, it's amazing...(actually, if a Gnome is in there, I'd be a bit freaked out and would lock up the iPad at night...friggin' Gnomes)...

Thanks for making me laugh in the morning and starting my day out right.

 

[Jaro65]

I'm also wondering when the PA Semi people will actually make something

Well, we were all expecting some type of magic to come out of that shop since Apple acquired it. It would be great to know what exactly they have been doing since then. Not that we ever will though....

 

[jnpy!$4g3cwk]

Maybe the morons who keep claiming A4 is a powerpc chip emulating ARM will go away now. Fast14 logic explains the increases core area as well.

What are the features of current ARMs that allow them to scale up, multimedia-wise? I recall the original RISC-ish architecture was a very simple integer architecture.

 

[cmaier]

What are the features of current ARMs that allow them to scale up, multimedia-wise? I recall the original RISC-ish architecture was a very simple integer architecture.

Arm has the Mali core for graphics (though Apple doesn't use it, instead using powervr). If you mean things like SIMD instructions, ARM has various extensions for that: http://www.arm.com/products/processors/technologies/dsp-simd.php

 

[hStack]

Who cares what powers the iPad/iPhone. How does the damn thing run? Fast? Smooth?

Good. That's all that matters. No one really gives a sweet damn what's under the hood. The User Experience, however, is all.

True for 99.99% of the people out there, they shouldn't care other than the user experience, but for those of us who build chips or computer hardware for a living, we do care, since this is how technology progresses, by building on and leapfrogging past innovations.

 

[jacksonkeller]

True for 99.99% of the people out there, they shouldn't care other than the user experience, but for those of us who build chips or computer hardware for a living, we do care, since this is how technology progresses, by building on and leapfrogging past innovations.

So true, having spent alot of my adult life working in fabs pushing wafers through steppers, implanters, etchers... the technology is amazing, and scary when it comes to job security. I've lost count of the fabs that have closed.