Wasn't there a rumor that the A9 will have that built in or somthing a few months ago?
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Intel Seeking to Woo Apple Away From Qualcomm for Cellular Baseband Chips
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Wasn't there a rumor that the A9 will have that built in or somthing a few months ago?
I hope the rumor is wrong, I would prefer that they contiue fillout the alphabet chip soup.
The major problem for Infineon ( and Intel after they bought them) was that they thought LTE wasn't a big deal and slow rolled it. Energy efficient non LTE chipsets are not going to be very competitive with carriers who rolled out multi-billion $ LTE networks. Or their users.
Qualcomm has broader and deeper LTE coverage than any of the competitors. That makes a difference. I know all the Qualcomm haters out there don't like it but it is one for Apple in several of the major markets they sell into.
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I use to drive around and do baseband testing on a particular phone (stupid NDAs ) in 2007/08. I was happy to see a change to Qualcomm.
Intel has probably made some significant improvements post acquisition.
) in 2007/08. I was happy to see a change to Qualcomm. Intel has probably made some significant improvements post acquisition.
You do realize how hard it is to place transistors reliably in a silicon substrate separated by roughly the same width as 18 phosphorous atoms, billions of times in a chip, with hundreds of chips per wafer, and get yields that make it marketable, right?
This is what Intel is doing. They aren't only designing the chips, they are reinventing the lithography process *every year*. And when you are getting to almost sub-nanometer scale, it gets kinda hard.
Apple didn't make or totally design the M7 (motion) chip.
"Chipworks found that the M7 most likely is a NXP LPC1800 based microcontroller called LPC18A1. ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M7
Apple just slapped a sticker/moniker on someone else's implementation. There is little to no evidence that isn't the same case with the M8 version. Apple has been buying the "motion" chip along with Baseband. Just different vendors.
Tim didn't double down on the M chip .... why would baseband be any different? There is extremely little upside to trying to suck it in. The broad and fragmented radio standards around the world Apple largely doesn't have to deal with. It is largely the suppliers problem. If Apple sucks that inside they will need to at least duplicate all that expertise. .... for what upside?
Apple still has a significant subset of iOS devices that have no celluar radios (Wifi iPads).
Apple has stayed ahead of the general ARM applicaiton processor race largely because they haven't distracted their team with anything else but doing the "best" iPhone/iPad SoC unit they can. No distraction on "server market" , no cover every device possible , no "put Intel out of business" distractions.
Even inside of their SoC they are buying shared R&D from ARM and Imagination Tech. There is little to no advantage to going entirely proprietary. It doesn't buy them a whole lot. Doing a good Cortex M3 (or newer) isn't the same thing as the high end A53 (or newer) design. Those are going in different directions.
If apple was to build their own baseband chips, I am sure licensing would very very expensive. Surely Intel and Qualcomm have many patents for their baseband solutions.
Because Apple advanced their mobile products so fast right? How many years have we been at 1GB RAM now?
That was nothing compared to the one Steve gave IBM for not being able to produce a G5 laptop
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You concluded the baseband had failed?
The phone would boot with a failed baseband. You would just have no connection to mobile phone networks. It would effectively be an iPod Touch.