Apple

The Apple rumor mill kicked into high gear again Monday regarding the much discussed, yet still mythical Apple tablet. But a significant new piece of information emerged.

Tech blog Venture Beat is reporting that PA Semi, the chip company Apple bought last year whose specific function within Apple has thus far been unclear, will be designing the chips for an Apple tablet in house. Dean Takahashi wrote Monday, "PA Semi's team was split into two parts, one designing portable ARM-based processors for iPhones and iPods, and another designing a processor for the tablet device."

The PA Semi team has some renowned chip designers, and there have been recent Wall Street Journal reports that Steve Jobs has been personally overseeing the development of a tablet-like device, and that Apple also has a large chip design project in the works. Taken together, all three reports seem to make sense.

But the round of rumors regarding the supposed tablet from earlier in the day point to an October launch time frame for the device. There's no actual evidence for that. Apple did do a Mac notebook event in October last year, and it's conceivable it could do another one, bringing out a touch-screen tablet in time for the holidays.

But October is very soon. Reports from Apple analyst Gene Munster, beginning in May, have repeatedly pinpointed a tablet launch in early 2010.

Advanced Micro Devices worries that lingering issues--both real and speculative--with Apple MacBooks are giving laptop graphics a black eye.

In a phone interview Tuesday, Stan Ossias, director of marketing, mobile graphics, at AMD, began by asserting that my March 11 post "overstated" the case about heat and the instability of graphics processors in laptops and that some readers may interpret heat issues too broadly.

"In the case of Apple's product, I don't know what happened with Nvidia's GPU but we'd like to avoid having the negative aspects taint the entire industry," he said. (GPU stands for graphics processing unit.)

Most recently, there have been reports of performance issues with Apple's new 17-inch MacBook Pro, which has the Nvidia GeForce 9600M chip. But it's unclear whether Nvidia's chips are really the problem and it's not known how widespread the issues are.

Ossias started off the discussion by spelling out how AMD mobile graphics processors can adjust performance and power consumption to different conditions. (The technology, it should be noted, is applied in various ways by many graphics chips.)

"When the system is calling upon the GPU to do more work, we either increase the voltage or increase the clock speed or increase the operating attributes of the system in order to maximize the performance, and when those things are not in demand we can scale them back so they're not constantly being run at their maximum. This is the way we go about trying to avoid overheating," he said. Strict implementation of these design parameters is particularly critical in systems where there is the greatest potential for overheating: thin notebooks and high-end gaming notebooks, according to Ossias.

AMD provides tools to PC makers, he said, who make the final design decisions on how the GPU will perform in different power-usage scenarios. But sometimes the laptop maker won't make the best choice.

"Somebody may choose a GPU that doesn't necessarily have the best operating characteristics or doesn't deliver the optimal power consumption in all operating ranges. That's a constant development challenge" for laptop makers, he said, then added: "A very, very large proportion of our customers do a very good job of this."

"I don't think Apple does a bad job of this in general. They are extremely meticulous generally," he said. However, in some cases "a product decision is made (where) maybe there is more emphasis put on performance characteristics than on another characteristic. Again, that's another choice that can be made," Ossias said.

Ossias gave an example of the type of graphics chip that would not go into the new MacBook Pro, which is about an inch thick. At the high end of its mobile graphics chip lineup, the ATI Mobility Radeon 4870 can draw as much as 45 watts--a big power draw for a mobile chip. Due to these power characteristics, this would not go into a thin form-factor notebook like the new MacBook Pro, he said.

AMD announced new mobile GPUs last week based on a cutting-edge 40-nanometer process

(Credit: AMD-ATI)

Last week, AMD announced groundbreaking mobile GPUs, the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830 and 4860, based on a cutting-edge 40-nanometer process. Both chips compete in the same general performance category as the 4870 but start at a much lower power-consumption level (the low 20-watt range) and "therefore you can actually get the 4830 into a thin and elegant notebook design," according to Ossias. AMD's current 4650 and 4670 can fit into thin form factors also, he said. These latter two chips would be in the same class as the Apple MacBook Pro's Nvidia GeForce 9600M, he claimed. The 9600M is the chip alleged to have heat and performance issues.

"I know that when Nvidia announced (in October of last year) publicly that it was recalling or having to rework some of its products and they took a big write-down, we had to address concerns from our customers that we were not also experiencing packaging failures because of the overheating and design flaws that they were experiencing in their product line," he said. "So, we basically had to go and calm down a lot of our customers and say, look, this is not something that's inherent to our technology, it's not something that you have to expect from any GPU."

Nvidia is again at the center of a graphics tempest in the media, this time surrounding performance issues of Apple's new 17-inch MacBook Pro. Two little pesky questions haven't been answered yet, however. Are Nvidia graphics chips really the problem? And are the issues really that widespread?

Postings in an Apple discussion forum cite a smorgasbord of problems: Some cite the Nvidia GeForce 9600M, while others point to issues with fan speed. Another post points to faulty wiring and another to the main processor (i.e., Intel). But this is just one forum. Does this really indicate widespread problems?

Does the Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch unibody have chip issues?

(Credit: Apple)

I haven't heard back from Apple. Nvidia had no comment Monday.

So, I spoke with a few people who have informed insights into potential problems. Not all would speak on the record, however. Jon Peddie of Tiburon, Calif.-based Jon Peddie Research, which tracks the graphics chip market and does testing on graphics chips, said he hasn't tested the new MacBook Pro yet. Generally speaking, however, a GPU problem of this sort would dictate a BIOS change to adjust the fan speed (one of the possible solutions proposed already). Or, if it's more serious, the graphics board would need to be replaced. (BIOS stands for basic input-output system; GPU stands for graphics processing unit; CPU stands for central processing unit.)

"If either of those conditions were true, Apple would be issuing an alert," he said. The alternative is for Apple to deal with the alleged problem on a piecemeal basis, one customer at a time, Peddie said.

The latter scenario--the status now--of course leads to a lot of speculation and attempted diagnoses among users.

I also contacted another analyst, Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at the The Linley Group. He made some obvious points but important in the context that it's not necessarily the GPU. Basically he said that if any chip exceeds the "thermal design budget," the system becomes unstable.

Other people I contacted (who wished to remain anonymous) said the issue appears to be more of a fan issue than a GPU issue. But the jury is still out. And, let's be clear, Nvidia has been faulted for past MacBook glitches. The most recent being in October. Will Nvidia be perpetually plagued by fallout from past problems? The 1994 Pentium FDIV bug was an Intel albatross for years.

I see another ancillary issue--not necessarily directly related to the MacBook Pro issue discussed above--that needs to be addressed. Here's the proposition: you want better graphics but you also want a sleek laptop like the Apple MacBook Pro. Well, if you're pushing the outside of the graphics-performance envelope, something's got to give. It's like saying: I want a car that goes from zero to 60 in under four seconds but with low emissions.

The truth is high-performance discrete GPUs and Intel CPUs--even the ones with the "m" (for "mobile") suffix--will sometimes wreak havoc when they're stressed inside enclosures only 1-inch high (i.e., many laptops). But I'm stating the obvious (I think). Anyone who has maxed out a relatively high-performance GPU or CPU in a laptop knows the real meaning of the euphemism "uncomfortably hot"--a phrase often used in discussion forums.

Overheating results in a lot of unpleasant (and sometimes seemingly unrelated) surprises, including BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death), automatic (arbitrary) shutdown, and, as in the case of the MacBook Pro, graphics artifacts.

Some people will always point their finger at Nvidia (or ATI) but I submit that some of those people experiencing problems would be the first to raise a stink if Nvidia didn't offer a high-performance laptop graphics chip to run Crysis at the frame rates and resolutions they demand. Yes, a product should work as advertised but there are limits to what a GPU (or CPU) can do inside the thermally challenged, cramped quarters of a laptop.

Not that Nvidia is absolved of any and all crimes. Far from it. As I stated above, Nvidia has had its share of problems that were its own fault. But even Intel's integrated graphics (theoretically the most power efficient) has heat gotchas of its own. Heat has been an issue in the first version of the Intel-graphics-based MacBook Air (when playing video)--which I can vouch for since I own a first-generation MBA. And I have another laptop (from a top-five PC maker) with integrated graphics that immediately heats up (and sometimes overheats) when running video.

But back to discrete GPUs. If you want desktop-level graphics in your sleek laptop, then you're going to have to take the heat and, consequently, in some cases--if you push the graphics card--instability and graphics anomalies. That doesn't make it right. It's just a fact of life.

Future versions of Imagination Technologies' graphics cores could mean iPhone games far more sophisticated than 'Super Monkey Ball.'

(Credit: Apple)

Apple has taken a small stake in a British chip designer, revealing how the company plans to power the graphics in future iPhones and iPod Touches.

Imagination announced Thursday that Apple has acquired a 3.6 percent stake in the company, which will only cost Apple 3.2 million pounds, or about $5 million. Imagination designs chip cores for a variety of applications, but its most prominent designs are its PowerVR cores for graphics in mobile phones.

That is believed to be the source of Apple's interest in the company, according to AppleInsider, which has tracked Apple's interest in the PowerVR technology for some time. Earlier this year Imagination announced that a "international electronic systems company" had acquired a license for the PowerVR graphics cores, and in Thursday's press release, Imagination said Apple was also a licensee.

The PowerVR cores will likely sit alongside the ARM-based processor core designs that the former P.A. Semi team is believed to be developing for future iPhones. Imagination has also signed a manufacturing license deal with iPhone processor maker Samsung, perhaps a sign that Apple will continue to use Samsung as a manufacturing partner once the P.A. Semi designs are complete.

Despite the tanking economy, Apple's new MacBooks due to be unveiled Tuesday are creating some buzz (see Techmeme) and propping up Apple's stock price. The latest alleged pictures in the wild are of the new aluminum case (above) of the forthcoming systems posted on MacX.cn.

According to AppleInsider.com, the new higher end MacBook Pro will include a mini-DVI connector and a single FireWire 800 connector.

Overall the changes don't look major other than the shift to aluminum and the rumored substitution of Intel's chip set of Nvidia's graphics chip set, as reported by AppleInsider.

An investigation by Apple shows some MacBook Pros may have faulty Nvidia graphics processors after all, despite Nvidia's earlier assurances to the contrary, the computer maker has announced.

Apple said it will repair at no charge MacBook Pros where the Nvidia GPU has failed, or fails within two years from the purchase date. Problem signs include distorted or scrambled video, or no video on the screen though the computer is turned on. Models that might be affected are 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pros with Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics processors. The computers were made between May 2007 and September 2008.

Apple says some models of MacBook Pros may be affected by an Nvidia graphics chip glitch.

(Credit: Apple )

This past summer, Nvidia acknowledged that a packaging defect had led to a graphics chip problem that affected some notebook computers, including those made by Dell and Hewlett-Packard. The chipmaker said in July it was taking a one-time charge of $150 million to $200 million to cover expenses relating to the glitch.

In a post about the problem, Apple said that back in July "Nvidia assured Apple that Mac computers with these graphics processors were not affected." But the computer maker's own investigation showed some models might be affected.

Nvidia's director of PR and events, Derek Perez, told MacWorld on Friday the company "has worked diligently with Apple." According to Perez:

"Our analysis shows that a failure in an Apple MacBook Pro notebook is remote. However, Apple, like other OEMs, decides on their own how to handle their warranty and repair programs, based upon their own quality standards. Regardless, we stand by our products, thus the reason why we set aside such a large reserve, and we have and will continue to work closely with Apple and their customers."

Apple may have taken a look at the future of mobile chip development and decided to forge its own path.

Future successors to the iPhone 3G might use a chip completely designed by Apple.

(Credit: Apple)

The New York Times scored an interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs following Monday's Worldwide Developers Conference keynote, and buried inside a rambling exchange about parallel processing and Mac OS X Snow Leopard was this little nugget about PA Semi, the chip company Apple acquired in April. "PA Semi is going to do system-on-chips for iPhones and iPods," Jobs told the Times.

System-on-chips, or SOCs, are pretty much what they sound like: complete computer systems on a single chip, including the processor, memory, graphics, networking, and all the regulator chips needed to manage things like power consumption. ARM's licensees, such as Texas Instruments, Samsung, and Nvidia build SOCs around ARM's processor cores for smartphones such as the iPhone, and Intel wants to head down this path with its Atom processor family.

It's well known that Apple has played an active role in the design of chips that go into its system for years, but the acquisition of Dan Dobberpuhl's PA Semi team means it will apparently play an even more active role in the future. Jobs has previously said that Apple acquired PA Semi for its talent and patents--not its products--but had not shared many details about its plans for that talent.

In an interview with Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang last week, we got to talking about mobile processors and the evolution of that market, and he insisted that Samsung, widely thought to be the processor supplier inside the iPhone, merely "fabbed" the chip. In his view, Apple was the chief designer of the ARM-based processor that's used to run the iPhone--and presumably the iPhone 3G unveiled Monday--with Samsung just providing the factory. The PA Semi engineers would allow Apple to draw up a complete design in-house and take it to a chip foundry without having to let any other mobile processor companies in on its plans, Huang said.

The companies that license ARM's instruction set are increasingly butting heads with Intel as the ARM community tries to move up from smartphones into more powerful mobile computers, and Intel tries to shoehorn its PC processing know-how into a mobile environment. There has been much speculation over the past year or so that Apple will one day add processors for mobile devices to the invoices orders it sends Intel every quarter for Mac processors, but the PA Semi acquisition apparently means Apple is prepared to go it alone.

Apple will be a chipmaker--of sorts--for a while after its acquisition of PA Semi as it satisfies demand for that company's current product.

The Register is reporting that Apple will support PA Semi's current Pwrficient processors after it finalizes the purchase of the company. Apple CEO Steve Jobs indicated after his company bought PA Semi that its primary interest in the chipmaker was for the company's talent and patents, not the actual chips themselves.

But PA Semi counts some pretty influential organizations among its user base, such as the U.S. Department of Defense, which uses military systems built around Pwrficient chips, and apparently likes them. EETimes had reported that Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, two prominent defense contractors, planned to complain to the DoD after hearing that PA Semi couldn't guarantee the supply of those chips after it was acquired.

Apparently the parties have managed to work out a deal that satisfies all concerned. The DoD could have caused problems for Apple by holding up the acquisition, but Apple could fairly easily cut a deal with a third-party foundry to manufacture the Pwrficient chips and dedicate a few PA Semi employees to managing that business, as El Reg suggests. Apple will not, however, continue to produce new versions of the Pwrficient chip, meaning the defense industry will have to look elsewhere at some point.

Is Apple really that much of a chip hopper?

If Apple follows through and uses a chip designed by its latest acquisition, PA Semi, in a future product, the company will have made major bets on Power, x86, ARM, and Power again in just this decade. What, no love for SPARC or MIPS?

PA Semi's chips aren't going to fit into this little package just yet, but they could one day.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

A PA Semi representative on Wednesday confirmed last night's news that Apple has paid $278 million for the low-power chip designer. Led by prominent chip designer Don Dobberpuhl, the two-and-a-half-year-old company makes chips for embedded devices based on IBM's Power instruction set.

So what might Apple want with PA Semi? Forbes reported that Apple plans to put its chips inside the iPhone, but several possibilities are being considered this morning, as the industry tries to digest this piece of news.

Apple's iPhone group almost assuredly doesn't want PA Semi's current product. The PWRficient PA6T-1682M is the only product listed on PA Semi's Web page. It's a dual-core 64-bit chip designed for high-performance computing and embedded applications--things like server appliances or sophisticated telecommunications gear.

It's a pretty powerful chip that consumes between 5 watts and 13 watts of power, in most situations. However, while that may be ideal for a server, networking switch, or even a MacBook, it's way too much for a handheld device like the iPhone or the iPod Touch. The Samsung chip inside the iPhone is based on a core designed by ARM that consumes about 279 milliwatts running flat-out at 620MHz. Apple uses a slightly slower version.

Even Intel's Atom chip, which is going into so-called mobile Internet devices, consumes less power than the PA6T-1682M (that's a hell of a name). To date, no other company appears to be developing a smartphone based on this generation of Atom.

A few interesting possibilities perked up as I traveled across the Web this morning. A commenter at The Register, picked up by Slashdot, suggested that Apple could have a game console in mind. That would be a perfect application for this kind of chip, though I'm not sure that if Apple has the desire to get into game consoles, despite filing a patent for that type of device. Maybe Apple TV 3.0 could use a performance boost, which Apple would certainly get, switching to the PA chip and dropping an older version of Intel's Pentium M processor.

Apple could be planning to release a mobile Internet device of its own based on the chip. Again, power consumption concerns raise a red flag here, as you'd have to design any handheld device to accommodate the worst-case scenario power consumption of PA's chip: 25 watts. You'd really need something bigger to effectively dissipate that much heat, as it would require a cooling fan.

Another interesting possibility could be that Apple wants to get more involved in the server market. PA Semi initially wanted to get its chips inside Apple's notebooks, and was apparently in discussions with Apple right up until its decision to embrace Intel's notebook processors in 2005. After that defeat, PA Semi pitched its chip as ideal for clusters of low-power servers.

The most likely scenario is that Apple wants a future PA Semi product for a handheld, server, notebook, or something in between. Dobberpuhl and his team of veteran chip designers are some of the brightest minds in the industry, with an extensive track record. The chipmaker also brings along a low-power patent portfolio that would be attractive to any company focused on low-power computers.

Apple's Scott Forstall explains how the iPhone's operating system is just like Mac OS X at Apple's iPhone SDK unveiling.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Initially last night, distracted by the epic Game 7 played by the San Jose Sharks, I was floored by the possibility that Apple might switch back to Power after such a public divorce. Veteran Apple software developers must have whiplash at this point, working with Power, ARM, and x86 in just three short years.

But I failed to remember (helpfully reminded by TalkBackers this morning) that when Apple made the switch to Intel's chips, it directed software development down the Universal Binary path. Any piece of software written for the Universal binaries will run natively on either x86 chips or Power chips, which allows PowerPC-based Mac owners to keep their systems and upgrade to new software, such as Mac OS X Leopard.

There's an extensive list of applications on Apple's Web site that were created with the Universal binaries. That means it would be relatively painless for Apple and its partners to switch back to the Power architecture for anything that runs on the Mac, since Universal software would run natively on PA Semi's chips.

Could Apple do the same for the iPhone, at some point down the line, when PA Semi is able to get power consumption down to milliwatt levels? We learned during the iPhone SDK event in March that the iPhone's OS X is almost exactly the same thing under the hood as Mac OS X, which would suggest that it also was developed with Universal binaries in mind that could run natively on ARM and other instruction sets, such as x86 or Power. That's not at all certain, but it's an interesting possibility.

That would mean that Apple has figured out a way to develop its software as to take advantage of whatever the best chip on the market is at a given time, without having to worry about porting concerns. Don't like Intel's road map? Switch to PA Semi. Don't like PA Semi's next big idea? Switch back to Samsung. That might be a stretch, but if true, it would send a shudder down the spine of many a chip industry executive.

Finally, there's the possibility that Apple is working on some new type of handheld computer that needs something different than what the ARM community or Intel has in mind two or three years down the road. I can't imagine that Apple would buy Dobberpuhl's company without giving that team some kind of project.

Don't count on much official word from either Apple or PA Semi just yet. Apple spokesman Steve Dowling told Forbes that the company doesn't comment on its plans for acquired companies, and the PA Semi representative said she couldn't even discuss whether the company's engineers would be moving across Silicon Valley from Santa Clara to Cupertino.

In any event, financial analysts awaiting Apple's earnings conference call later this afternoon will probably attempt to get an answer out of COO Tim Cook or CFO Peter Oppenheimer. Late last year, investors had wondered what Apple was planning to do with all its cash. Now they have some idea.