Damn that's a significant hit. Are shareholders that paranoid? I mean, this will in no way affect ARM's total domination of the low power SoC design market, at least that's the way I see it.
These guys basically print money through licensing. It's a dream revenue model imo.
I'm completely no expert, but wouldn't it be simple leverage to lower prices?
ARM: "Hey Apple, let's talk about what you're buying next year!"
Mr. Apple: "Well, I've been talking to Intel and actually just bought some of their spiffing chips, how much did you want again? Because, you know, Intel said they were totally in to that thing you said no to..."
> They license the IP so that Apple can make their own custom chips.
Doesn't Apple have an ARM architecture license, freeing it of having to "license the IP" now?
Further, ARM was founded as a joint venture between Apple, VLSI Technology, and Acorn Computers. Their history goes back to the day the company was created. (ARM chips powered Apple Newton.)
But if you sell plans to make chips that less people want, it'd lower the demand for those plans. Might not be direct, but I'm sure Arm cares and uses their market dominance to boost prices.
there's still an ARM core in every smartphone, whether Intel fabs it (they don't), or Samsung, or TSMC.
Intel gave up the ARM business. They have the best fabs in the world and could dominate the business... but not without cannibalizing the x86 business.
And now that ARM 64 is in widespread use, it can address lots of RAM, and servers could be on the horizon.
ARM devices are going to keep replacing x86 devices, ARM is going to keep moving up into higher-end devices, and the impact on Intel is going to worsen.
At some point Intel might throw in the towel and start supplying ARM chips, but at that point they will just be another (very good) fab, not an x86 monopolist.
Which is rather bizarre, considering the majority of Intel's modems ship with multiple ARM cores (One in the X-Gold baseband, and another running the "application" firmware implementing mbim/qmi/whatever.)
This gives some additional credence to the rumors that Apple has been working with Intel to create an SOC with the modem built in. It would be a big step for Apple and opens up some additional board space on what is arguably one of the most complicated PCBs for a consumer product (if you have a dead iPhone laying around its amazing to have a look at the PCB).
It's not just the bands. The 6 is capable of VoLTE, but VoLTE isn't available everywhere on every carrier. So it still has to be able to drop down to 1x, which means CDMA for Verizon, Sprint, and US Cellular, while AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM.
You'd think Apple could put out just one model when the 1x networks go away.
Per http://www.apple.com/iphone-6s/specs/ under "Cellular and Wireless", there are two models of the 6s and the 6s Plus, with the only difference being the presence of LTE Band 30. My understanding was that Band 30 (in the US) is exclusive to AT&T, but I don't know that.
That hasn't been true for a while. IIRC The Sprint model of the 6S is a better world phone because it has more bands (including Chinese bands); the current ATT model swaps some of those for the ATT 700mhz bands.
"Qualcomm’s modems remain ahead of Intel’s offerings in performance when measured by how much data they can get from the network into the phone."
I hope it's not something that the users (and I) will have to worry, if "Intel is inside." That is, I hope that the difference won't be observable in "normal use."
A little. There have been some rumors that Apple would use an Intel modem for a while, although that kind of seemed nipped in the bud when Intel announced that it will stop making mobile SoCs, so mainly from that point of view it's unexpected.
Intel and Apple probably signed this contract quite a while ago, though, maybe at least 18 months ago. If Intel wouldn't have gotten this, it would've probably shut down the entire mobile operation, including the modem division (it would've probably sold it off).
People are reading a bit too much into the "Intel killing Goldmount" news, assuming that killing off all publically announced SoCs means Intel are abandoning the SoC market.
In reality, Intel is killing Atom, because Skylake has more or less spec'd it out of existence. Atom was an attempt to do x86 with a low power, smartphone/tablet budget, and it sacrificed a lot of performance in order to fit into that budget. The result is a 2.5w Airmont chip.
Intel have also been focusing on low power with their Sandybridge/Haswell/Skylake Core line. And the result is a 3.5w Skylake chip, that has over twice the performance of the Airmont chip. 3.5w is still a little large for a phone but it's small enough for a tablet. In the next generation or two, intel will shrink the Core architecture down to something which fits in the 2.5w power budget for a smartphone.
Basically, Intel are killing Atom because it's no longer better than Core in any way. They will regroup and launch new SoCs in the future.
Shock horror, people want to be paid for the content they put out. Wired and Bloomberg are the only sites I have AdBlock disabled for as they keep them unobtrusive.
I would say that the auto-playing video with controls that aren't focusable or usable is worse. Couldn't stop the video from playing without deleting the object via Firebug.
My comment had nothing to do with whether it was an ad or not. I don't really care whether they're monetizing their video or not... going to their site is a bad experience.
I'm more interested in the content of the linked article than whether it offends someone's sensitivities. Bloomberg articles linked here tend to be interesting and of good quality.
I don't know if this is a win for privacy (Qualcomm's modem was known to be compromised), or if Intel's Management Engine (or similar) gets a new home.
Still interesting, but not as much as Intel fabbing the A10 would have been.