Apple iPad announced

Dude, where is my pinky?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O005Hr-xQfc&feature=related

 

http://www.engadget.com/2010/04/27/apple-purchases-intrinsity-just-498-more-arm-licensees-to-go/
Apple purchases Intrinsity

 

A colleague has just brought one in to the office. I'm not in the least bit covetous.

 

Just green with envy, eh?

 

Simon going NV, confirmed.

 

Any reprts of problems with these. My friend got a DOA and while at the apple store with him yesterday someone had a unit that stoped charging.

Thankfully for them there were no refurbs avalible so they got new units from apple care.

Just a heads up for anyonethat owns them , make sure the recharge time isn't increasing each time you charge it. This si what the girl noticed before not being able to charge at all.

 

If you did that, your company would have the most advanced techlororys in the business!

 

Sounds like Samsung is gonna start 32LP volume production in Q3/2010. Very impressive. AFAIK not quite early enough for the next iPad (in spring I assume), but theoretically possible for the 2011 iPhone. Apple would be pushing it, though.

http://www.electronicsweekly.com/Ar...7/samsung-taping-out-32nm-foundry-designs.htm

By the way, this is one of the times I wish I had an microprocessor report subscription:
Why Apple Wants Intrinsity

http://www.mdronline.com/watch/watch_Issue.asp?Volname=Issue+#042610&on=1#item2

 

Apple has both a supposed ARM architectural license and Intrinsity's core tweaking skills now.

 

I wonder what was the deal about pa semi, given how short-lived the employment was for some of those engineers.

 

PA Semi was founded by Dan Dobberpuhl who was the lead designer at DEC who took an ARM architectural license and turned it into the StrongARM chip. I guess Apple thought he'd be just the chap to work some magic on their ARM architectural license, but they seem to have problems holding onto chip designers.

 

I wouldn't make to big of a deal of it. If you want to grow your chip design team quickly, buying an existing company is the way to go. It helps that PA semi had a lot of low power experience, but it's not essential to keep the lead designers. Designing for low power is now practiced by everyone, the knowledge has spread around. The real question is not how many of the principals left but how many of the rank and file has stayed. Given the not so great state of the economy, I'd say: the vast majority of them.

 

Maybe the Intrinsity guys will be able to use the PA Semi IP.

 

I don't even think there's that much reusable ip.

The IP around the CPU complex is not very large of these kind of chips. And PA didn't have anything in the field of audio, video, 3d, image processing etc. Apple has been hiring a lot of people with experience in those fields over the last two years.

 

TechCrunch murmurs about the possible premature death of HP's Windows 7-based Slate project.

The iPad competitor was revealed by Steve Ballmer at this year's CES to much fanfare, but rumours claim HP is now unhappy about the touch experience in Windows 7 as well as the battery life of the Atom solution.

 

It is interesting to see how many companies as well as 'people on the internet' are discovering the value of what Apple did with the iPhone OS by trial and error.

I think this may well be tied to HP's purchase of Palm's OS technology. They now understand the value of it and I think we'll see a quick shift to Web OS.

 

It might well be tied to the purchase but so far webOS hasn't really managed to gain a lot of traction. Rumour has it that the main idea behind the Palm purchase was an inexpensive way to grab a nice patent portfolio.

Generally, I think HP might be wiser to ride the Android mindshare.

 

Well $1.2 billion is a lot for just a patent portfolio. Actually, Nokia and RIMM might have done better with the webOS than trying to catch up with their homegrown development.

And the value of iPhone OS now includes the app. ecosystem, something which webOS is far behind.

At their last quarterly report a few weeks ago, Palm said it had like 9 months inventory in the channel. They've been dumping that product, which by now has an uncompetitive SOC. HP might have to eat some inventory and move up to the fastest SOCs as soon as they can, otherwise the perception of webOS isn't going to improve.

Regarding the patent portfolio, Apple supposedly has patents on many of the multitouch gestures copied by Android and webOS. But yeah, those older Palm patents may have insulated them from litigation.

 

Which Atom system does it use? That could make a lot difference to the power consumption.

 

It surprises me that they didn't realise before in the design phase that putting a full-blown desktop OS on a device like this is major mistake.