According to processor design news services EDN.com, Apple has acquired Texas-based Intrinsity, or at least many of its engineers. The company may even have had input into the creation of the A4 with its Fast14 technology, which focuses on domino logic for embedded cores.
Samsung and Intrinsity showed off their jointly developed processor, Hummingbird, last year, running on an ARM Cortex A8 core at 1GHz. Unusually for Samsung’s chip arm, it was reported to have secured two design wins with its own handset sister company, which has a history of buying its silicon outside the family fold. This was potentially a blow to Qualcomm, whose Snapdragon 1GHz app processor is currently leading the field in high end smartphones and mobile internet devices ‘ the Korean giant is Qualcomm’s largest handset customer.
If Apple owns or controls Intrinsity, it is unclear whether it would use a customized version of Hummingbird itself, or turn its new unit to enhancing A4, leaving Samsung without its ally. However, with new Apple resources behind it, Intrinsity could also keep both developments in parallel. Samsung and Apple are already close ‘ the former provides the app processors for the iPhones, and is the manufacturing partner for the A4. And many saw the Hummingbird project as a way to keep the processor slot in the iPhone despite the PA Semi purchase, and in the face of a possible Snapdragon bid for a new CDMA iPhone.
‘The partnership between Apple and Samsung on the apps processor in the iPhone has been a major coup for Samsung, establishing it as a player in the market and allowing it to challenge the incumbent leader Texas Instruments,’ said a recent report from iSuppli. ‘While there is a lot of speculation as to whether Apple’s acquisition of PA Semi will change the parameters of this partnership, for now at least, Samsung’s apps processors have a secure position in the product line.’
Whether that remains true will be seen when the next iPhone is launched, probably this June. It could retain the Samsung processor, but in light of recent news, may be more likely to sport a version of Hummingbird, combining the relationship and history with the Korean giant, and the influence Apple could wield over Intrinsity.
In December, Samsung started sampling two 1GHz app processors based on the ARM Cortex A8 platform, one for smartphones and one for netbooks and ‘smartbooks’. The S5PC110 and S5PV210, will be made on Samsung’s 45nm process to reduce power consumption. The Hummingbird platform claims performance of 2,000 Mips with power consumption of just 640mW. Before this, Qualcomm was the main vendor pushing ARM to the gigahertz limit while preserving power levels sufficiently low for handsets (for comparison, a 2GHz Atom still consumes 2W).
Last year, Samsung accounted for almost 16% of the market by revenue for standalone apps processors for smartphones and featurephones, still a long way behind market leader Texas Instruments, but increasing its share, according to iSuppli (which defines standalone apps processors as DSPs or logic-based processors that are not integrated with the digital baseband, as Qualcomm’s are, and that are dedicated to supporting high level OSs, multimedia content and applications, and imaging). These are fairly big ticket items in the cost sensitive world of cellphone chips ‘ the Samsung processor accounts for an estimated 8.4% of the materials cost of the iPhone 3GS, at $14.46, and cost reduction may be another factor in Apple’s decision to control its own suppliers.
Not everything is harmonious in the Apple silicon world though. A number of the A4 design team, acquired in 2008 with PA Semi, have already left, according to EETimes, to form a new start-up, Agnilux. PA Semi was co-founded in 2003 by Dan Dobberpuhl, the lead designer of Digital Equipment’s Alpha and StrongARM microprocessors (the latter acquired by Intel and then by Marvell). Dobberpuhl is one of the team to have left Apple, according to reports.
As for other silicon in the iPad, the first teardown comes from UBM TechInsights, showing Samsung and Broadcom to be the big winners. David Carey, VP of technical intelligence at the firm, says the A4 is supporting richer graphics with a 64-bit path to main memory, twice the width of the memory bus in the iPhone. Samsung provided NAND flash for the 64Gb iPad, while Toshiba supplied flash for other models. The dual-vendor approach may be partly a matter of capacity ‘ when the iPhone 3GS launched last year, Toshiba issued a warning that it was nearing capacity on its flash memory production, sparking fears of shortages. The main drain was assumed to be Apple.
Also in the iPad, Broadcom has scored from the device’s increased use of touchscreen chips ‘ three instead of just one in an iPhone. The firm is providing its BCM5974 and BCM5973 controllers, both used in previous Apple devices, while the third, analog, chip comes from Texas Instruments. Broadcom is also thought to have won a slot for its BCM4329 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip.