As the Tame Apple Press (TAP) reports about the tear downs which are being carried out on the new iPad 2, they rush to praise Apple's A5 chip.
However one thing that Apple Insider has spotted is that the new A5 processor is jolly expensive.
The chip is made by Samsung and it has the new 46nm Low Power DDR2 memory. It also has a variable clock speed and costs about $25. Nvidia's Tegra 2 is nearly $10 cheaper than that.
While the chip cost is not the biggest part of the Apple tear down bill it does beg the question, why is Apple bothering to make its own chip for $25 when it could buy the thing off the shelf for $15?
Obviously if Jobs guarantees production to Samsung, or TSMC, and the A5 will be used in all Apple products it will bring down the cost a bit. In fact there are rumours that Jobs' Mob is working with TSMC anyway. However the A5 that is under the bonnet is made by Samsung using its 45nm process, said Apple Insider.
There is no doubt that the A5 is an improvement on what has gone before, but it is pretty much on a par with what is already available in the industry. Both it and the Tegra are based on the same ARM A9 technology.
The A5 does seem to have some controller technology which sometimes slows down the chip speed for power reasons, but really it is not that significant.
It would appear that Jobs has insisted that Apple develop the A5 in-house with no clear business reasons to do so. He could have popped around to Nvidia and bought the whole thing for less and not had to worry about the administrative headache.
True, him and Nvidia have not been the best of chums, but for $5 a machine at least he would have had nothing to lose. If he was doing a deal that big with the Green Goblin he might have got a hefty discount.
The only reason we can think of is that he wanted more control over his suppliers, even if it cost him a bit extra. If you have your own chip you can tell people how to make it. Telling Nvida something like that would always be tricky.
However an extra $5 is a heavy price for what is usually only a technical amount of control.
The combination of more speed while seemingly not reducing the time between charges could be argued as justification?
The benchmarks and the much quicker performance of the iPad 2 shows that the money for the A5 S on C is money well spent.
This is just silly. What kind of a writer puts a statement like this on paper? How does Mr. Farrell know whether or not Apple has a business reason or not? Simply because Mr. Farrell (with zero experience running a mult-billion-dollar company) thinks it is a bad idea?
Talk about ignorance and arrogance. Wow.
Nick, Nick, Nick. You've gone and totally missed the point. The A5, and it's successors are Apple's Intel exit strategy. Apple isn't happy with Intel. Intel, like Motorola before them, is too big for Apple to control. If Intel decides that Apple doesn't matter, Apple has big problems.
With ARM the situation is different. Apple takes the basic core, adds on what it needs, and presto, super chip. I don't know what the time frame is for the move, my guess is that we could see the laptops start moving in the summer of 2012.
The Mac OS X App Store was a critical part of getting ready for the move. With it, when you buy a new Mac, Apple can deliver to you all of your installed software... So there's no need to worry about minor details like architecture changes, it just works.
The summer of 2012 date is an estimate based on the pubic ARM roadmap. It's about then that ARM Chips that are about equivalent to Intel for performance, while maintaining their lower power advantage should be on the market. Might be some time either way, but I'm pretty certain that Apple is going to dump Intel. There are too many advantages (smaller, lighter, less expensive battery, less expensive CPU, lower heat output, etc.) and no disadvantages.
Wayne
PS: Drop over to my site and search on ARM, you should see several articles on the issue.
It think it is clear that they determined at that time they were never going to be dependent on chipmakers again.
Just because a company is successful does not mean it makes the right decisions. Microsoft hasn't for example. Sorry fanboys come up with reasons i am wrong rather than just say "it is silly". Others can come up with rational answers. I like Drews idea it is similar to mine. It is worth spending the money to be in control
If the A5 chip also integrates other functionality that requires a support chip with Tegra 2 (e.g., WiFi is on the A5 according to one die strip-down) then the overall costs come down greatly.
I also expect that the A5 might have been initially designed and targeted at a 28nm or 32nm process, but at these are all delayed they stayed with the 45nm process, hence the larger die, and the higher cost.
:))
The A5 includes 512 MB of high speed RAM not included in the Tegra 2 from NVidea.
The A5 simply crushes the Tegra 2 in GPU performance and based on NVidea roadmaps will still beat the Tegra 3 for GPU performance. It is not that the A5 is so amazingly great but, rather that the Tegra 2 is that bad in the GPU performance area.
The A5 is getting much better battery performance than any other Tegra 2 tablet out there.
The A5 is cheaper given the integrated memory and other SoC components.
The A5 puts Apple in control of their own destiny while providing class leading price/performance.
Switching from PowerPC must have cost Apple a pretty penny, what with developing the support for fat binaries the and generally pissy Mactards upset that their CPU had gone the way of the Dodo.
Apple is if nothing else intent on retaining control over it's supply lines: thus over the CPU.
My $0.02
The would need to control for the OS to have any credibility.
Android vs. Apple IOs is comparing "apples to oranges!" Pun intended.
RUN IOs on the TEGRA2 and THEN COMPARE THE RESULTS!!!
Until then ....you Apple fan boys can beilieve whatever you want. It wouldn't be the first time you guys let your leg tingling for Steve Jobs get in the way of rendering an honest evaluation.