Full of Win
macrumors 68030
..or Apple could have drove a dump truck full of money to their houses to 'encourage' them.
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Another AMD Graphics Executive Headed to Apple?
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..or Apple could have drove a dump truck full of money to their houses to 'encourage' them.
I hope you're being sarcastic - hot processors are defined by Intel and their Netburst P4's, Core i7's, etc. And you're also wrong on the second account, seeing as how the Athlon 64 X2s came out not too long after Intel released their first dual cores, the Pentium D's - yes, years ago
Or a job is a job, especially when one company has a more stable outlook than the other, especially in this economy
Tallest Skil
macrumors P6
The purchase of PA Semi + the poaching of experienced chip engineers = some pretty damn funky innards for future generations of iPods, iPhones and anything else Apple might be developing.
I, for one, am looking forward to whatever it is that they have in store.
I, for one, am looking forward to whatever it is that they have in store.
nuckinfutz
macrumors 603
Also look at Newton... and they did, they just called it XXXX Touch! 😉
They never had come come up with the idea of the App Store.
I don´t think they will make a console like Xbox more of a multifunction, ipod, eReader, internet plat from PDA thinggy that will also play games... Look at Nintendo and PSP... that is a market to own. And if you could deliver with an AppStore heck this thing could also add some serious HD playback! Well there goes the neighborhood! Common AAPL... I have my retirement bet on you!
😉
Apple has no reason to buy AMD, they can hire all the talent, and they already have PA SEMI to make whatever chips they want. I think the first move will be an iphone chipset with great Graphics. But I think a desktop style GPU would also be a possibility.
They have the capability to make any GPU they want, and now they have the people to design it. As long as they write drivers so the GPU would work in windows they could be on to a winner.
Apple loves to have standard parts through their product lines, making their own GPU would allow them to have maximum performance for a minimum price... after all most mid ranged graphics cards are weakened versions of the top model. The only reason a Nvidia 295 costs £400 is because, its what people are willing to pay for a top line product. Apple could make their own GPU's as fast as possible and have them as standard on both a mac pro and an imac. The same for the Macbook Pro and the Macbook. If apple does this then the Mac could become the PC Game weapon of choice, giving people great graphics bang for their buck.
Just imagine what people who say "macs are just a nice box" will think if the first GPU to play Crysis on full settings is only available from apple!
They have the capability to make any GPU they want, and now they have the people to design it. As long as they write drivers so the GPU would work in windows they could be on to a winner.
Apple loves to have standard parts through their product lines, making their own GPU would allow them to have maximum performance for a minimum price... after all most mid ranged graphics cards are weakened versions of the top model. The only reason a Nvidia 295 costs £400 is because, its what people are willing to pay for a top line product. Apple could make their own GPU's as fast as possible and have them as standard on both a mac pro and an imac. The same for the Macbook Pro and the Macbook. If apple does this then the Mac could become the PC Game weapon of choice, giving people great graphics bang for their buck.
Just imagine what people who say "macs are just a nice box" will think if the first GPU to play Crysis on full settings is only available from apple!
Not bothered about all that NetBook blather but if this has anything to do with the iPhone/Pod it confirms my suspicions that this platform could really get even more interesting. I hope Apple are working on something really beefy here for future iPhone releases. 😉
nuckinfutz
macrumors 603
iPhone graphics will be done by Imagination. Apple's the "undisclosed" licensee and they invested what 5 million dollars in Imagination
The talent Apple's hiring is most likely going to build custom SoC and deliver the software smarts to ride on top.
Chaszmyr
macrumors 601
It's true that Apple could easily buy AMD - they could even buy them outright with cash.
However, $2b is still a significant amount of money, and whether or not it would be a good investment depends a lot on what Apple has in mind.
I have no doubt that it's true Apple is continuing to work on their own chips for the iPhone and other non-Mac products, but I wonder if perhaps they also have it in mind to design a custom chip for Mac logic boards that would be super-optimized for OpenCL. I'm not sure how difficult it would be, but I could imagine doing so could give MacBooks, Mac Minis, etc a significant performance advantage over competing computers in the price range.
Full of Win
macrumors 68030
Here I corrected it for you. I'd assume that a purchase would be married to the companies outstanding debt, of which AMD has plenty, sans a bankruptcy.
makes no sense to buy amd when they will be using their chief competitors products and they stand no chance in switching to amd developed x86 at the moment, despite amd chip's being great and to me nearly equal to intel (just not spending enough $$$ on advertising) - as a matter of marketing they can't. Had they still been in the ppc era THEN it might make sense.
Also what I read that they should buy amd and rebrand them to just make graphics and ditch the whole x86 is again ludicrous, that's like saying buy (to use the tired car analogy) ford and use the facilities and engineers to build planes, it's just not that easy to rebrand something based on your needs. In any case they have all the low cost, low power mobile talent they need in pa semi.
Also what I read that they should buy amd and rebrand them to just make graphics and ditch the whole x86 is again ludicrous, that's like saying buy (to use the tired car analogy) ford and use the facilities and engineers to build planes, it's just not that easy to rebrand something based on your needs. In any case they have all the low cost, low power mobile talent they need in pa semi.
AidenShaw
macrumors P6
Ford airplanes, what an unbelievable idea....
...almost as silly as SAAB airplanes...
Frankly, I think you're off your rocker if you believe that Apple can just suddenly make a GPU. There is a big big reason why there are only two major discrete GPU makers (Nvidia and ATI) and frankly, it remains to be seen if Intel's Larrabee comes up to par with what Nvidia and ATI have to offer whenever Larrabee comes out. The amount of know-how and knowledge required to design these things is incredible - if Apple tried doing this, they would be easily 4-5 years behind Nvidia and ATI and they'd have little return on their GPUs.
Why do you think that Intel and AMD (prior to ATI acquisition) had only done integrated (awful, at that) graphics chipsets despite both having the foundries and engineers to design extremely complicated CPUs? As a guy who's done work with chips in the electrical engineering field, believe me - the amount of work required to design even a cheap GPU is not something Apple's business model will take unless they're interested in burning a lot of cash and time to play catch up with established companies. It's why they got rid of PPC in teh first place
4th Gen Iphone to rock the world
I predict that we will see the first fruits of all these aquisitions and management poachings in summer 2010 when the 4th gen Iphone is released.
It will have at least 512 Mb of ram, be available with 64 GB of memory and have a quad core CPU with one of the most advanced GPUs ever seen.
It will be capable of playing games that put anything on the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP to shame and may even be able to host games of similar quality as that of the tri core Xbox 360.
As someone who is considering getting a 4th gen Iphone I can't wait to see what marvels all these nifty new chip designs will bring.
I predict that we will see the first fruits of all these aquisitions and management poachings in summer 2010 when the 4th gen Iphone is released.
It will have at least 512 Mb of ram, be available with 64 GB of memory and have a quad core CPU with one of the most advanced GPUs ever seen.
It will be capable of playing games that put anything on the Nintendo DS or Sony PSP to shame and may even be able to host games of similar quality as that of the tri core Xbox 360.
As someone who is considering getting a 4th gen Iphone I can't wait to see what marvels all these nifty new chip designs will bring.
Hmm OK I guess I'm told
But it is strange how they are hovering up graphics specialists... I guess buying up AMD might make sense, because then they could make their own GPU and CPU, having used Intel as a stepping-stone into the x86 market.
That said ATI was founded in 1985 AND NVIDIA in 1993... so you can play catch up in the GPU world with the right ppl, which apple has.
You might have a point... If the Graphics on the ipod/iphone is really high quality, you can plug it into a tv, add some blue-tooth wiimote style controls. And Voila, you have a highly portable games console, with an app store, that anyone can program for. It could be like a nintendo DSi,Wii, Phone, Media Player, and internet device all in one.
Integrating chips everywhere...
I don't really think it's going to be limited to the iPhone/iPod Touch, there's just too much money being invested in expanding hardware development expertise even for as big as the iPone/iPod market is. Apple isn't bull-ish on the netbook or tablet market either. PASemi was so valuable to to Apple, for some reason, because of their "Instant-On" and full computational arsenal available only when needed/as needed tech. The PASemi tech was thriving in server RAIDs and Apple pulled the plug on those developments conceivably to eliminate future competition, also there are significant numbers of complex custom built military computer systems built around these processors. Add in Apple's obsession with heterogeneous cpu/OS solutions and the picture looks a little different to me. Apple's been offloading more and more of it's Quartz graphics to the GPU for a couple of years, but neither ATI nor Nvidia have proven to be reliable partners with respect to build good basic drivers for their hardware and they expect more of the same from Intel. I don't think they want to have so much of their functionality dependent on third party hardware anymore.
Ultimately even though Apple's been able to drive down their costs and expand their product lines with Intel processors they probably still haven't reached the theoretical peak of their "ideal" hardware set. Personally I think Apple is interested in moving most of their hardware back to being closer, architecturally, to embedded systems which can increase stability and performance by great magnitudes...it's just a matter of keeping the OS general enough and finding that balance.
I think Apple's goal is to have a custom processor in every computer product they develop. Here's a heterogeneous computing article that gives some ideas about the benefits of designing hardware differently possibly using x86 cpus as a base system component. Heterogeneous Computing (not a lot of info, but definitely somewhere to start the paper trail)
I don't really think it's going to be limited to the iPhone/iPod Touch, there's just too much money being invested in expanding hardware development expertise even for as big as the iPone/iPod market is. Apple isn't bull-ish on the netbook or tablet market either. PASemi was so valuable to to Apple, for some reason, because of their "Instant-On" and full computational arsenal available only when needed/as needed tech. The PASemi tech was thriving in server RAIDs and Apple pulled the plug on those developments conceivably to eliminate future competition, also there are significant numbers of complex custom built military computer systems built around these processors. Add in Apple's obsession with heterogeneous cpu/OS solutions and the picture looks a little different to me. Apple's been offloading more and more of it's Quartz graphics to the GPU for a couple of years, but neither ATI nor Nvidia have proven to be reliable partners with respect to build good basic drivers for their hardware and they expect more of the same from Intel. I don't think they want to have so much of their functionality dependent on third party hardware anymore.
Ultimately even though Apple's been able to drive down their costs and expand their product lines with Intel processors they probably still haven't reached the theoretical peak of their "ideal" hardware set. Personally I think Apple is interested in moving most of their hardware back to being closer, architecturally, to embedded systems which can increase stability and performance by great magnitudes...it's just a matter of keeping the OS general enough and finding that balance.
I think Apple's goal is to have a custom processor in every computer product they develop. Here's a heterogeneous computing article that gives some ideas about the benefits of designing hardware differently possibly using x86 cpus as a base system component. Heterogeneous Computing (not a lot of info, but definitely somewhere to start the paper trail)
Ford airplanes, what an unbelievable idea....
...almost as silly as SAAB airplanes...
I always feel safe when a plane has Rolls-Royce Engines... Concorde was cool 🙂
...Shame about the French over fueling and not cleaning their runways 🙁
Attachments
Or Maybe...
Take a look at this article here:
http://www.neowin.net/news/gamers/09/04/29/3d-why-a-new-xbox-is-coming-sooner-than-later
Or this snippet:
"...It was one simple comment on our recent tour of AMD's facilities during Neowindex in Austin, Texas... "Wait until you see the next generation of consoles."
I think we're getting hints of something HUGE. Apple working with AMD to bring out an OpenCL based game console. And we can expect Apple to deliver a something innovative and more integrated with everything else they do.
Well it makes perfect sense. What's bigger than music players and phones? Apple have a proven platform to launch it too. iTunes and iPhone app store are both successful. Oh and how convenient! there's heaps of hungry iPhone (game) developers out there 🙂
Take a look at this article here:
http://www.neowin.net/news/gamers/09/04/29/3d-why-a-new-xbox-is-coming-sooner-than-later
Or this snippet:
"...It was one simple comment on our recent tour of AMD's facilities during Neowindex in Austin, Texas... "Wait until you see the next generation of consoles."
I think we're getting hints of something HUGE. Apple working with AMD to bring out an OpenCL based game console. And we can expect Apple to deliver a something innovative and more integrated with everything else they do.
Well it makes perfect sense. What's bigger than music players and phones? Apple have a proven platform to launch it too. iTunes and iPhone app store are both successful. Oh and how convenient! there's heaps of hungry iPhone (game) developers out there 🙂