Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

More Claims of Samsung Being Cut Out of Apple's A7 Chip Development

Mr Fusion said:
I was hoping the childish behavior would end with Steve...

If Samsung was a good part supplier, use them.

If Apple took care of their own house by continuing to be creative and innovate, they wouldn't have to worry about Samsung. Honestly I don't know why they'd worry about Samsung in the first place. Their phones run Android. Android is garbage that looks and feels like a middle school kid coded it during 5th period.

I feel like so many of Apple's "problems" have arisen because they have tried to appeal to the masses. They didn't earn that stockpile of cash by following, but by leading.

Get back to the basics and quit with the ******* games.

/end rant. :cool:
Click to expand...


Looks like you forget that managing your supplier is part of the games... Even if you take away the competitive nature between Samsung and Apple handset products, it is not a good ideal to have a supplier that is too powerful and supply too much of your component. It is same for the supplier, they want to diversify their customer list so that each manufacturer only account for a small part of their business. Samsung has started to dominated the component market (especially LCD) and Apple is just trying to diversify their supply chain. There is another rumor that Apple is trying to get Intel to produce some of the A7 chip as well.
 
Important to note that not all processes are created equal. I've read estimates that TSMC is 20% to 30% denser on a given process. This explains why they usually have more process growing pains.

It will ultimately mean apple can pack more in a chip or get more chips per wafer.
 
nutjob said:
Why are Apple still acting like children now that Steve Jobs is dead? Taking massive risks with moving production so that they can somehow "penalize" Samsung? Really, this is the stuff of schoolyards, not corporations.

You only have to look at Samsung's own ARM offerings to see they are way ahead of Apple, and this won't help Apple catch up.
Click to expand...

You don't seem to know much about semi-conductor production. If this is a new chip, it is going to be a new production line, so this will need to be set up from scratch whether it is Samsung or some other manufacturer.

Moreover, Apple creates the designs, not the manufacturer. Samsung is not sharing their own designs with Apple, so the observation that Samsung has better ARM offerings, if true, is irrelevant.

----------
chrmjenkins said:
Important to note that not all processes are created equal. I've read estimates that TSMC is 20% to 30% denser on a given process. This explains why they usually have more process growing pains.

It will ultimately mean apple can pack more in a chip or get more chips per wafer.
Click to expand...

Correct. TSMC may just be better at meeting Apple's goal of more processing for less power consumption.
 
This just shows how long design cycles are for these products. The average person has no idea that it does take 4-5 years to make a tech product.

It'll be one more year before the product is available, since it just taped out, due to testing and production. It took 6 months-1 year to do physical design. It took another 2 years to architect.

The decision to move to TSMC happened several years ago, perhaps before Samsung even grew into the iPhone space.
 
BornAgainApple said:
They've seen this coming for months, if not years. I'm sure they've adapted by now. If they haven't, too bad. They'll survive.
Click to expand...

Not exactly. How many companies like Apple do you think Samsung has on its clientele list? Planning for it is as simple as firing those who worked those lines. Still bad for business as you now have less sales.
 
Gasu E. said:
You don't seem to know much about semi-conductor production. If this is a new chip, it is going to be a new production line, so this will need to be set up from scratch whether it is Samsung or some other manufacturer.

Moreover, Apple creates the designs, not the manufacturer. Samsung is not sharing their own designs with Apple, so the observation that Samsung has better ARM offerings, if true, is irrelevant.

----------



Correct. TSMC may just be better at meeting Apple's goal of more processing for less power consumption.
Click to expand...

Speaking as an ASIC designer that's done several high-volume products with TSMC (including the XBox360), the real reason Apple is going with TSMC is that they're just cheaper.
 
nutjob said:
Why are Apple still acting like children now that Steve Jobs is dead? Taking massive risks with moving production so that they can somehow "penalize" Samsung? Really, this is the stuff of schoolyards, not corporations.

You only have to look at Samsung's own ARM offerings to see they are way ahead of Apple, and this won't help Apple catch up.
Click to expand...

I think you don't really know arm business.
ARM licences its technology like ARM7 cores to different companies eg. Samsung and Apple.
They take the cores, build a whole system on a chip around them and produce them.

But samsung does not invent their own cores. They just combine them.
Apple did with its own A6 something different. They bought the more expensive licence allowing them to modify the core. And thats why the a6 even with dualcore was faster than sammies quadcore chips
 
Oletros said:
Well, if it is substituting Samsung for TSMC they are not diverifying :D
Click to expand...

Whatever diverifying means :D

I said diversify the suppliers. Adding TMC as a supplier qualifies. Apple still uses Samsung for memory chips.
 
Last edited:
Why do we keep calling this the A7 chip instead of the A8? Do we really doubt Apple won't label whatever chip they come out with this year as A7?
 
Bravo! Samsung should have not stolen Apple product ideas in the first place. They will tegret this.
 
JarJarThomas said:
But samsung does not invent their own cores. They just combine them.
Apple did with its own A6 something different. They bought the more expensive licence allowing them to modify the core. And thats why the a6 even with dualcore was faster than sammies quadcore chips
Click to expand...

I think that you're wrong, both of them modify the ARM systems
 
It will all end in tears, when everyone is waiting for their newley released iphone to be instock because they have component issues.
TMSC has never had to deal with the volume of chips that Apple will put on them.

Samsung are still making parts for the iphone and other apple products enjoy your crappy LG/sharp retina displays.
 
What about LCD Panels? Going by the personal experience of having horrible panels made by LG or AU Optronics on my MBA and MBPr I wonder how they will wean off Samsung Panels.
 
So what does this mean for 2013 ios devices not much of a cpu diffrence in power?

Does going from 32nm die to 28nm make that much of a diffrence?
 
dreadnort said:
It will all end in tears, when everyone is waiting for their newley released iphone to be instock because they have component issues.
TMSC has never had to deal with the volume of chips that Apple will put on them.

Samsung are still making parts for the iphone and other apple products enjoy your crappy LG/sharp retina displays.
Click to expand...

Crappy Sharp Panels? Apple chose Samsung and others because they cant afford Sharp.
 
mozumder said:
Speaking as an ASIC designer that's done several high-volume products with TSMC (including the XBox360), the real reason Apple is going with TSMC is that they're just cheaper.
Click to expand...

Cheap isn't better, especially when it comes to complicated things like this. Completely shutting the door on Samsung may come back to bite Apple on the ass.
 
i have a feeling this will be more of a downside for apple then it will be for Samsung.
 
G4DP said:
Cheap isn't better, especially when it comes to complicated things like this. Completely shutting the door on Samsung may come back to bite Apple on the ass.
Click to expand...

No, it won't. They should have done this long time ago.
 
Gasu E. said:
Correct. TSMC may just be better at meeting Apple's goal of more processing for less power consumption.
Click to expand...

I imagine so. Not only by virtue of using a smaller process, but it logically follows two chips, one smaller than the other, that have the exact same logic at the same frequency must mean the smaller one is accomplishing it with fewer electrons. I'm sure the power density doesn't scale linearly.
 
The next chip will be called A7, unless they come up with another that sounds good.
 
Samsung will probably be able to crank out more of their own Exynos Octa 5 and future chips now and be less reliant on Qualcomm Snapdragons
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back