Intel Reportedly Halts Development of 5G Modem After Losing Orders for 2020 iPhones

[konqerror]

Hope this is fake.

This would be bad for Intel, Apple and the American technology sector.

The effort isn't American. Intel's cellular development is largely in Germany, since it was originally Infineon, with parts in Israel and India. The chips weren't even fabricated in America until last year; they were sent to TSMC.

An Apple modem would be more American than Intel.

 

[JPack]

In all likelihood, Apple will use a 5G modem from Qualcomm or Huawei. These are the two main pioneers of 5G and have actually demonstrated fully working modems both fabbed by TSMC.

Apple is not about to gamble on second rate modems from Intel or MediaTek for something as important as 5G.

 

[bluecoast]

What’s up with intel?

Are they going to focus on cloud computing chips now whilst milking x86 (still) for as long as they can?

 

[IG88]

Apple is also moving away from Intel chips in its Mac lineup, with rumors indicating the company is developing its own custom chips that could appear in Macs as early as 2020.

I'm actually starting to dread this.

When Apple moved to Intel they essentially abandoned their previous gen CPUs. If they take that same approach, coupled with likely loss of interoperability (i.e. no more Boot Camp) my 2017 MBP may be my last.

 

[NoNothing]

“Apple is also moving away from Intel chips in its Mac lineup, with rumors indicating the company is developing its own custom chips that could appear in Macs as early as 2020.”

This is an outright lie at the end of the article. This is stated as a foregone conclusion of fact instead of a questionable (at best) rumor.

 

[macduke]

The industry is moving away from Intel. They aren't able to keep up. They're going to need to make some drastic changes in the coming years to remain relevant. Hopefully they can get a new CEO that will set them on the right track. They're an iconic company and it would be a shame if they were to ever shut down operations entirely.

 

[Andres Cantu]

Well remember when 4G came to the market and android did it first? There weren’t enough towers at the time and battery was awful then because of 4G when it launched.

While that’s true, we have no guerantee that will be the same case this year. I guess only time will tell!

 

[JPack]

What’s up with intel?

Are they going to focus on cloud computing chips now whilst milking x86 (still) for as long as they can?

Google, Apple, Amazon, Alibaba, and Tencent will continue to buy servers. Servers still rely on x86 and that's where the bread and butter is.

 

[rasoetan]

Apple has informed Intel that it will not use the chipmaker's 5G mobile modem in its 2020 iPhones, according to a new report.

Israeli website CTech by Calcalist reported on Wednesday that it had reviewed internal communications from Intel and spoken to "people familiar with the matter", leading it to conclude that Intel will not provide the 5G modems for Apple's 2020 mobile devices.

Calcalist said the communications it had seen described Apple as the "key mobile customer" and the "main volume driver" for the "Sunny Peak" 5G mobile modem, underlining the impact the loss of business would have on the chipmaker.

Apple was also said to be facing a "massive effort" to launch 5G in its mobile products, with Intel executives blaming the company's decision not to use its modems on "many factors", including the introduction of a faster WiGig (802.11ad) Wi-Fi standard, which brought "new and unanticipated challenges".

In a response to Calcalist's request for comment, an Intel spokesman said the company does not comment on matters relating to its customers.

The news follows one analyst's prediction last week that Apple could choose to use modems manufactured by MediaTek instead of Intel in future iPhones.

Northland analyst Gus Richard gave no timeline for the predicted switch, but with deals for 2018 iPhones already established, any impact was expected no earlier than 2019.

Apple added Intel as a manufacturer only a couple of years ago, after previously relying solely on Qualcomm for its modem chips. Current iPhones use LTE chips from both companies, but Apple is embroiled in a lawsuit with Qualcomm and is rumored to be planning to ditch their chips, too.

Apple is believed to be developing its own modem chips, but it will need to continue to use third-party chips until its in-house solution is ready to be deployed in iOS devices.

Current rumors suggest Intel will supply approximately 70 percent of LTE chips for Apple's 2018 lineup, with the rest of the chips coming from Qualcomm.

Apple is also moving away from Intel chips in its Mac lineup, with rumors indicating the company is developing its own custom chips that could appear in Macs as early as 2020.

Article Link: Intel Reportedly Halts Development of 5G Modem After Losing Orders for 2020 iPhones

 

[konqerror]

Google, Apple, Amazon, Alibaba, and Tencent will continue to buy servers. Servers still rely on x86 and that's where the bread and butter is.

Nope. Google, Rackspace, Alibaba and Tencent are deploying Power servers. Microsoft is doing ARM. Cloud servers are the easiest to move over because Google has complete control of their source code and can easily recompile it. There's no legacy considerations like desktop does. Cloud scale is so large that a few percent improvement means easily tens of millions of dollars.

 

[JPack]

Nope. Google, Rackspace, Alibaba and Tencent are deploying Power servers. Microsoft is doing ARM. Cloud servers are the easiest to move over because Google has complete control of their source code and can easily recompile it. There's no legacy considerations like desktop does. Cloud scale is so large that a few percent improvement means easily tens of millions of dollars.

Your own news links indicates Google is testing POWER 9 servers.

Yes, everyone is testing ARM, POWER 9, and RISC-V.

Intel literally has over 99% of the server processor market share.

 

[ksec]

Considering Intel cant get 10nm out in volume, why is anyone surprise by this?

The good thing about Mediatek is their Modem are TSMC made, which Apple has full visibility to its problems, performance, and yield. And made with leading 7nm node.

Your own news links indicates Google is testing POWER 9 servers.

Yes, everyone is testing ARM, POWER 9, and RISC-V.

Intel literally has over 99% of the server processor market share.

Well actually 95%. I think they went from 94% to 95% this quarter. But still, 95% is pretty damn impressive.

 

[bluecoast]

Your own news links indicates Google is testing POWER 9 servers.

Yes, everyone is testing ARM, POWER 9, and RISC-V.

Intel literally has over 99% of the server processor market share.

Even so, Intel feels like a dead cops my walking.

I don’t know anything about servers admittedly, but the overall trend in computing does seem to be to risc, low powered and and eco friendly - all things that Intel chips don’t appear to be.

They could take a lead out of Microsoft’s book and do a massive pivot.

We all debate Windows on the desktop, as that’s definite the end user consumer/business pc experience for so long.

However it’s not so important to Microsoft who are now just milking Windows as they’re looking to leapfrog forward to cloud, AI and the IoT.

 

[konqerror]

Your own news links indicates Google is testing POWER 9 servers.

Nope. Google deployed, as I said. You could have checked this with a quick search.

 

[pika2000]

That’s because you didn’t factor in that MediaTek is synonymous of crap on Android, and it’s a Chinese company.

Mediatek is a Taiwanese company.
They get the bad rap because most Android OEMs only adopted their low-end chips. Imagine if most Android OEMs only use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 2xx chips, people would get the same "crap" impression about Qualcomm. Having said that, I feel Qualcomm has done a better job in improving its GPU than Mediatek.

 

[throAU]

Google, Apple, Amazon, Alibaba, and Tencent will continue to buy servers. Servers still rely on x86 and that's where the bread and butter is.

Intel relying on that market, in the face of EPYC from AMD is being severely short sighted and risky.

Yes there are niche workloads where intel is currently faster, but you can get a 32 core 64 thread EPYC with more PCIe lanes for under half the cost of a 28 core Xeon at the moment. And EPYC v2, which is due for release early next year, is rumoured to be even more cores in the same package.

 

[pratikindia]

The effort isn't American. Intel's cellular development is largely in Germany, since it was originally Infineon, with parts in Israel and India. The chips weren't even fabricated in America until last year; they were sent to TSMC.

The Intel modem was developed and tested in China too. I have a friend who works at Intel (Shanghai). He told me few years ago about the development and testing of Intel modem for iPhone before Intel chips landed on iPhone.

 

[ksec]

The Intel modem was developed and tested in China too. I have a friend who works at Intel (Shanghai). He told me few years ago about the development and testing of Intel modem for iPhone before Intel chips landed on iPhone.

Well of coz it is tested in China where TD-LTE is the dominant use case, much like Infineon had to do their testing in US for CDMA.

That is why I am actually hoping Mediatek gets the job, Intel cant rely on Apple only to be their guinea pig.

 

[JPack]

Well, it turns out this rumor was bull ****.

The original source backpedaled to say they were talking about Intel's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip. More BS as Intel never supplied those chips to begin with - it has always been Broadcom.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3741719,00.html

 

[elvisimprsntr]

More in depth and accurate report over at The Reg with corrections from Intel PR. Apple is dropping interest in Intel's "Sunny Peak" WiFi/BT chip. The Intel 5G modem is a completely separate component and is still under consideration.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/07/06/intel_wifi_bluetooth_sunny_peak/

The fake news likely reported by someone looking to short Intel stock.

 

[ksec]

Well Apple has been designing and shipping their own Bluetooth and WiFi chip W1 and W2. So it makes more sense Apple will be using their own implementation.

The key point here, is 802.11ad. So you now see what Intel is trying to do. 802.11ad is an absolute nightmare to test especially with Intel tech not working well with others. Trying to lock in Apple with another Thunderbolt like technology.

Sigh. Right now Apple should simply move away from Intel.

 

[JPack]

Well Apple has been designing and shipping their own Bluetooth and WiFi chip W1 and W2. So it makes more sense Apple will be using their own implementation.

The key point here, is 802.11ad. So you now see what Intel is trying to do. 802.11ad is an absolute nightmare to test especially with Intel tech not working well with others. Trying to lock in Apple with another Thunderbolt like technology.

Sigh. Right now Apple should simply move away from Intel.

Ironically, it's Apple tech that doesn't work well with others.

W1 and W2 are proprietary technology that splinters off standard BT and Wi-Fi specs.

Thunderbolt 3 is a royalty-free open standard. You can't say the same thing for Apple, not even their 30-pin connector is anywhere close to being free.

 

[ksec]

W1 and W2 are proprietary technology that splinters off standard BT and Wi-Fi specs.

um.... no. it works with all bluetooth and wifi devices.

Thunderbolt 3 is a royalty-free open standard. You can't say the same thing for Apple, not even their 30-pin connector is anywhere close to being free.

it is not. at least not yet.