Report: Intel in Talks With Apple to Manufacturer iPhone, iPad Processors

[Dari]

This is interesting. Apple can't get away from Samsung fast enough. But Samsung's obsession with Apple continues with their recent 3% investment in Apple component maker Sharp Electronics. Anyway, Apple is also in talks with TSMC but I think Intel is a better bet since they are better at this and far more reliable. The only downside is what will happen to the Samsung foundry built in Austin not too long ago. It was meant to build Apple processors. A lot of people will lose their jobs and foundries are not cheap to build.

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The Chicago Tribune reports that Intel Corp. (INTC) has been in talks with Apple, Inc. (AAPL) to establish a foundry relationship. The possible hookup could also see Intel co-design the company's next generation iPhone and iPad processors, based on a future Atom mobile processor...

 

[Sheep221]

Not long ago apple wanted to switch to arm. And now this.

 

[dagamer34]

Considering Apple now designs its own chips, they are never, ever going to go with x86 Atom designs (it was improbable before, but impossible now. That's a $500 million investment). And to Intel, it makes absolutely no sense to give away their best advantage in their fab technology, which would basically be handing them their defeat. Someone buying an iPad means they aren't buying a device with an Intel chip inside that would make them far more money, and if the "iPad replacing computer" fad becomes a demonstrable fact on the order of hundreds of millions of units a year, they are screwed. It's impossible to rebuild your business that was dependent on $100+ chips when your competitors are now shopping devices that rely on chips that cost $17!

So anyway, this story logically makes no sense once you think it though. It's likely saying Windows 8 should have been a slightly tweaked Windows 7, ignoring the market with tweaked products mean should have to pull a RIM and re-invent your product 6 years too late when your cash reserves quickly disappear.

 

[Dari]

Considering Apple now designs its own chips, they are never, ever going to go with x86 Atom designs (it was improbable before, but impossible now. That's a $500 million investment). And to Intel, it makes absolutely no sense to give away their best advantage in their fab technology, which would basically be handing them their defeat. Someone buying an iPad means they aren't buying a device with an Intel chip inside that would make them far more money, and if the "iPad replacing computer" fad becomes a demonstrable fact on the order of hundreds of millions of units a year, they are screwed. It's impossible to rebuild your business that was dependent on $100+ chips when your competitors are now shopping devices that rely on chips that cost $17!

So anyway, this story logically makes no sense once you think it though. It's likely saying Windows 8 should have been a slightly tweaked Windows 7, ignoring the market with tweaked products mean should have to pull a RIM and re-invent your product 6 years too late when your cash reserves quickly disappear.

Sure it makes sense. No one is seriously thinking Apple will use Atom/x86 processors in the future. But they can use Intel's fab facilities, which, as the article states, are under-utilized. If Apple isn't using it, it'll go un-used.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Considering Apple now designs its own chips, they are never, ever going to go with x86 Atom designs (it was improbable before, but impossible now. That's a $500 million investment). And to Intel, it makes absolutely no sense to give away their best advantage in their fab technology, which would basically be handing them their defeat. Someone buying an iPad means they aren't buying a device with an Intel chip inside that would make them far more money, and if the "iPad replacing computer" fad becomes a demonstrable fact on the order of hundreds of millions of units a year, they are screwed. It's impossible to rebuild your business that was dependent on $100+ chips when your competitors are now shopping devices that rely on chips that cost $17!

So anyway, this story logically makes no sense once you think it though. It's likely saying Windows 8 should have been a slightly tweaked Windows 7, ignoring the market with tweaked products mean should have to pull a RIM and re-invent your product 6 years too late when your cash reserves quickly disappear.

Chipzilla reduced to being a mere foundry making ARM chips designed by a customer that won't hesitate to make them their bitch. That should be really humbling.

I don't think Intel even realized how absolutely BRUTAL the low-end SoC market is. I'm talking about $10 Quad A7s/SGX544 or Mali400 MP4 chips that finds their way into finished products in just 1 month after their announcement in China.

 

[Genx87]

Unless Intel can get power consumption under control. I see this as Intel fabbing Apples ARM SOC. Which for Apple would give them a nice lead over the competition.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Why would Intel do this? What do they really get out of helping Apple become less dependent on their core products?

After the way Intel has been fighting Apple recently I don't believe it.

 

[badb0y]

Intel's fabs are under utilized.

Despite that I doubt intel will ever fab an ARM processor lol.

 

[Red Storm]

I can't imagine it's cheaper to go from designing your own ARM processor to licensing Intel to do an x86 (which they effectively have a monopoly on) for you?

 

[dagamer34]

Unless Intel can get power consumption under control. I see this as Intel fabbing Apples ARM SOC. Which for Apple would give them a nice lead over the competition.

Anytime I see someone make this silly statement, I feel obligated to post this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myth-indepth-clover-trail-power-analysis :whiste:

 

[Jodell88]

I highly doubt Intel would fab processors for Apple.

@OP Samsung investing in Sharp ensures that Sharp is around in the future as it is in dire straits. There is no 'obsession' with Apple.

 

[WelshBloke]

Intel's fabs are under utilized.

Despite that I doubt intel will ever fab an ARM processor lol.

Xscale.

I guess that you mean that you doubt Intel will ever fab an ARM processor again.

 

[Red Storm]

Anytime I see someone make this silly statement, I feel obligated to post this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myth-indepth-clover-trail-power-analysis :whiste:

Hmm...

"One last note: unlike under Android, NVIDIA doesn't use its 5th/companion core under Windows RT. Microsoft still doesn't support heterogeneous computing environments, so NVIDIA had to disable its companion core under Windows RT."

Isn't the entire purpose of the companion core to save on power consumption? Notice they don't have an iPad in there either...

 

[pm]

Considering Apple now designs its own chips, they are never, ever going to go with x86 Atom designs (it was improbable before, but impossible now. That's a $500 million investment). And to Intel, it makes absolutely no sense to give away their best advantage in their fab technology, which would basically be handing them their defeat. Someone buying an iPad means they aren't buying a device with an Intel chip inside that would make them far more money, and if the "iPad replacing computer" fad becomes a demonstrable fact on the order of hundreds of millions of units a year, they are screwed. It's impossible to rebuild your business that was dependent on $100+ chips when your competitors are now shopping devices that rely on chips that cost $17!

What if Intel licensed the Atom core to Apple as an SOC block? Apple could keep it's design team and Intel would still have x86 in Apple products. It was just a thought that I had - that it's not a hard choice of Intel manufacturing ARM or Apple using Intel's chips, but a blend of the two. I haven't heard anyone else suggesting this but it seems to me to be a compromise that could work. I figure that if I've thought of this idea, then presumably the executives at Intel and Apple have too.

 

[TuxDave]

Anytime I see someone make this silly statement, I feel obligated to post this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myth-indepth-clover-trail-power-analysis :whiste:

Another person from Anandtech forwarded me this article:

http://www.cs.wisc.edu/event/power-...debate-contemporary-arm-and-x86-architectures

Basic conclusion is that ISA doesn't determine power efficiency. So ISA (x86 vs ARM) won't give an edge to one side or the other. The process tech, product performance goals and design talent will.

 

[Ravynmagi]

New business for Intel and solves Apple's Samsung dependency issue. Sounds like win-win to me. Not so much win-win for TSMC though who would of been the next logical choice for Apple to go to.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Why would Intel do this? What do they really get out of helping Apple become less dependent on their core products?

After the way Intel has been fighting Apple recently I don't believe it.

Better to at least cover the cost of running fabs than to have them running empty while raking up enormous fixed costs?

Regarding power consumption Intel has caught up with ARM but there is still the matter of pricing, ARM being more than good enough for mobile performance for 99% of people and if I'm a mobile maker I would be extremely wary of having my supply chain dependent on Intel considering their antics of pure greed at the expense of their partners over the past 2 decades. Just ask Acer and etc how is it like to get manhanded by Intel like ultrabooks so the latter can still rake in the high-margin dough while the former eats up the losses, and that's probably why Asus is investing so heavily into their ARM phone/tablet business.

 

[s44]

Anytime I see someone make this silly statement, I feel obligated to post this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myth-indepth-clover-trail-power-analysis :whiste:

You mean the Intel FUD disguised as an AT article? It's easily, in context, the worst AT piece in recent memory.

Whoop dee doo: a year-younger Intel chip on a better process beats one ARM chip that Microsoft's OS is too stupid even to utilize the power-saving design of! They've won all right...

But the real problem for this deal is that it could benefit only one of the two companies (which? depends on pricing) with the other getting a crap sandwich: either losing its monopoly profit rates, for Intel, or inflating its supply chain cost with Intel's monopoly tax after they've hired an in-house design group, for Apple. Both Intel and Apple only *serve* crap sandwiches in deals; neither eats them, which is why this rumor makes no sense.

Only scenario that makes sense would be Apple using Intel's fabs for its own ARM designs, which would be a huge development.

 

[Genx87]

Anytime I see someone make this silly statement, I feel obligated to post this: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myth-indepth-clover-trail-power-analysis :whiste:

Ehh that review has some issues. First is the fact the OS cant utilize the 5th core for Tegra 3. Second they are comparing an old chip to Intels current line up.

On top of that, what tablets I can get today with Intel inside have about 4.5 hours worth of battery life on them during moderate use and they are noteably heavier. My nearly 3 year old Tegra 2 based Transformer can watch 8 solid hours of 720p movies on a single charge. Light to moderate use? That runs into days.

Anyways I suspect at some point the performance of ARM and the process shrinks of Intels product will converge. But I dont see it happening quite yet. And Apple seems to enjoy having a custom designed SOC.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Light to moderate use? That runs into days.

To me the bigger problem with Intel in mobile devices is not battery life in use, its standby battery life.

Seems like every laptop that I have seen/had basically dies if you leave it suspended for more than a few days.

My wife has had her iPad last two weeks on a charge because she will go days between using it and the sleep mode on ARM sips the battery.

Has Intel caught up on this, or is that still something that needs to be done?

 

[Kenmitch]

Interesting if true. Seems like it would be better for Intel to fab gpus for AMD or Nvidia tho....One can only hope.

 

[StrangerGuy]

Ehh that review has some issues. First is the fact the OS cant utilize the 5th core for Tegra 3. Second they are comparing an old chip to Intels current line up.

On top of that, what tablets I can get today with Intel inside have about 4.5 hours worth of battery life on them during moderate use and they are noteably heavier. My nearly 3 year old Tegra 2 based Transformer can watch 8 solid hours of 720p movies on a single charge. Light to moderate use? That runs into days.

Anyways I suspect at some point the performance of ARM and the process shrinks of Intels product will converge. But I dont see it happening quite yet. And Apple seems to enjoy having a custom designed SOC.

S4 Pro was already out by the time of that "review" but Intel just want to compare themselves a dog of a chip by ARM standards called Tegra 3.

 

[TuxDave]

To me the bigger problem with Intel in mobile devices is not battery life in use, its standby battery life.

Seems like every laptop that I have seen/had basically dies if you leave it suspended for more than a few days.

My wife has had her iPad last two weeks on a charge because she will go days between using it and the sleep mode on ARM sips the battery.

Has Intel caught up on this, or is that still something that needs to be done?

Yeah it's been brought up....

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6262/...sandy-bridge-2x-gpu-performance-of-ivy-bridge

 

[poofyhairguy]

Yeah it's been brought up....

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6262/...sandy-bridge-2x-gpu-performance-of-ivy-bridge

Thank you TuxDave.

 

[Dari]

I highly doubt Intel would fab processors for Apple.

@OP Samsung investing in Sharp ensures that Sharp is around in the future as it is in dire straits. There is no 'obsession' with Apple.

They don't care about Sharp in that respect. They want Sharp around, not to have nominal competition, but to have access to LCDs panels without building more factories; have access to very large LCD panels; try to get access to Sharp's famed IGZO technology; and benefit somehow from Apple's upcoming Apple TV.

Given that Samsung isn't really innovating in the LCD arena; has an OLED tv that is inferior to LG's (according to Displaymate); and is trying all kinds of weird things in their small SAMOLED screens in order to increase resolution or make it tolerable, one has to wonder if Samsung is good at anything other than economies of scale manufacturing. Samsung succeeds at this by 1) agreeing to manufacturer a competitor's product. Then they learn the ins and outs of that product and then introduce their own. R&D is done by the competitor. By the time the competitor realizes what is going on it is too late. This happened to SONY, then Apple, and it will happen to Qualcomm. I mean, where is the innovation from Samsung? flexible OLED screens? SONY and many other Japanese firms did that years ago.