Wireless Industry Analyst

Sorry Vijay, but I'll have to disagree completely here, see my news piece on the subject: http://www.beyond3d.com/content/news/634

No offense intended with my title, you obviously just took Forbes' information to its logical conclusion without realizing they didn't do proper research. This processor is indeed more power efficient than the alternatives in the x86 and PPC space (or at least as efficient), but...

It's not designed at all for the handheld market and couldn't touch anything designed by ARM in terms of performance/watt. And raw wattage would be substantially higher than Silverthorne even on 45nm with a single core.

BTW, I agree with your opinion on SiRF; I don't think they can really prospere on their own going forward. Marvell or Intel are indeed viable acquirers, of course whether that will happen or not (and how much they'd be willing to pay) is another question entirely...

Arun,

Thank you much for your comments. Read your post. Interesting insights.

I think I might not have come across as effectively as I wanted to but if you sieve through this piece again, I have made the point that this is not for just the iPhone (Om Malik also speculates incorrectly that it is for the iPhone) but much beyond it - for any future mobile platform. And by mobile platform, I don't imply mobile phones but convergence devices pretty much along the lines of your "ultraportables and mobile devices between the iPhone and the Macbook." So, I am more in sync with your thoughts that off it, I think:).

Of course, the one difference is that I also think that down the lane, we may see this in the iPhone as well. This is not because the chip architecture is suited for the iPhone as is today but more because the iPhone will also morph towards further convergence in the future. (I have to confess though that taking it to iPods may be a stretch but as you may be aware, I am a big fan of the device convergence. I think there is a good possibility that in 10 years, the market for iPhone and iPod may merge.)

Also note that I have given importance to the design team than the existing design itself. I think that is also the key. The ability to have in-house experts further optimize the power at the hardware and software levels. In this context, I do think that designing a mobile application processor in-house now to compete with TI or Marvell is not beyond Steve Jobs' out-of-the-box thinking, especially if it can make sure that the Apple signature is unique to these devices.

And certainly, I think the PA Semi product will be a direct competition to the Atom putting Intel's business plans in the lurch. I agree with you there.

As always, keep your comments coming. More debate on this topic is very welcome. Your articles give me a good perspective and educate me further on the technical aspects.

Vijay

Yup, certainly their technology is very attractive for UMPC/MID, Ultraportables or Tablet PC-like devices. So on that front I certainly agree with you.

However, the way I look at it is that if Apple is serious about using P.A. Semi's technology for that market, and maybe the server market too (see my UPDATE at the bottom of the news post), then they need to keep working on high-performance processors that aren't suitable for handhelds.

The P.A. Semi design team isn't small, but it's also far from huge and I very much doubt they could support two independent architectures at the same time. Right now, ARM's Cortex-A9 on TSMC's 40nm process is likely to deliver better power efficiency than anything P.A. Semi can come up with in the next few years.

Now, if we're talking about, say, 2012... Who knows! That's at least *FIVE* iPhone generations away. You'll have to excuse me for not trying to speculate about such long-term things; Apple's decisions are already quite unpredictable in the short-term as this acquisition points out, so in the long-term...

And honestly I don't see why Apple would feel they could deliver a better solution than what is offered by Samsung, NVIDIA, TI, or [insert company name here]. They care a lot about pwoer efficiency, but the best way to achieve power efficiency from a hardware perspective may just be to be able to pick and choose between available designs and take the best one. That's exactly what they did with the original iPhone at least.

I understand where you're coming from when it comes to the software aspects of power consumption, and I agree that matters - however it's worth remembering that every single application processor company would *kill* to have Apple's business. So they'd be more than willing to allocate every possible resource to make sure the software side of things is finely tuned - which is why I don't worry too much about that in Apple's specific case.

Cheers,
Arun