The ARM Rationale

Architosh is not privy to any information that would lead us to believe this. It is just a matter of understanding Jobsian Logic. Such logic would inform you that Apple will take–when it has the reasonable opportunity–any path that allows it to gain unique advantages on their hardware and software fronts. Especially if this path enables them added control, first mover advantage or unique IP strengths.

This is the path it took with the iPad. When Architosh put together its final predictions on what the first iPad would hold we narrowed down on the fact that Apple had acquired PA Semi for a reason. We knew ARM was in the iPad…but what ARM chip?

“What would be really stunning today is if Apple has based the device on its own silicon design–namely that it has utilized its PA Semi group…”

(Read Architosh’s article that talked about an Apple touch device in the vertical markets...)

Control, First-Mover Advantage and IP Strengths

When Apple bought PA Semi it gained immediate intellectual property  (IP) strengths. Dan Dobberpuhl, who founded PA Semi was a lead designer for the well-regarded Alpha microprocessor as well as the StrongARM processor. Some speculated that Apple mainly wanted access to the PA Semi patents, not so much the 150 person strong PA Semi team.

As it turns out Dobberpuhl left Apple along with a small contingent of former PA Semi engineers and joined Amarjit Gill, a former principal at PA Semi who founded Silicon Valley start-up Agnilux. That company was since acquired by Google last year. And nobody knew exactly what Agnilux was actually doing, leaving a big mystery behind Google’s intentions.

The ARM processor was already highly involved in the smartphone market so adopting it wasn’t giving Apple any first-mover advantage. But it did come with some additional control since PA Semi had the highest level architectural license with ARM back in the UK. With it they could design their own modified ARM architectures. Apple’s A4 and A5 processors are unique ARM-based chips for Apple, thus the control issue and differentiation which many assumed Apple bought PA Semi for in the first place.

ARM the PCs

Going back to first-mover advantages, moving its personal computer business from Intel x86 over to ARM may or may not have any first-mover advantages for Apple. The Mac mainly competes with Windows. And Microsoft has already announced it is moving Windows to ARM processors. However, Microsoft’s moves are not entirely clear either. They appear to be moving over to ARM for Windows on slates.

Regardless, Apple can likely see the writing is on the wall when it comes to the future of ARM. ARM processors top Intel in the area of power consumption over performance. They are very efficient. ARM also has more momentum than Intel (see this chart over at this Cnet article).

(see this great Wikipedia article on the history of the ARM Architecture here.)

Even Nvidia has announced an ARM-based CPU for future supercomputing and high-end PCs. Nvidia announced at CES 2011 this year that they are taking aim at Intel with “Project Denver.”

And just this week IDC predicted ARM would capture 13 percent of the PC processor market by 2015. That assumes we can still “uniformly differentiate” the PC market from the MID market (mobile internet device market).

The Mac on ARM

So combined with what we know about ARM today, and what those like IDC are predicting about ARM tomorrow, and with a common sense approach to extrapolating Jobsian logic, it would appear more likely than not that Apple has already started the move to ARM for the Mac.

The A4

It is exciting for a couple of key reasons. Firstly, Apple bought PA Semiconductor a few years back and that group consisted of a “dream-team” of microprocessor designers. If you follow the PA Semi tag at the bottom of this story you can find some stories that will allow you to learn the details of PA Semi and who the group was. So with chip “dream team” in hand what would Apple do with that expertise? The obvious answer is create amazing processors that distinguish things like the iPad from rival products.  So the A4 is exciting because it is the first “child” from the PS Semi team.

The second reason it is exciting is because this first chip begs the question: what other future custom Apple chips are in the works? And what products may they go in? In particular, will the A4 go into the next version of the iPhone itself?

You see when you buy a “dream team,” then hide them away and come out with secret chips like the A4 and share absolutely no detail about its inner workings you create amazing drama. Period.

Sorry Steve if we are so darn excited about the A4 that we don’t seem to be focused solely on the iPad itself…but what do you expect?

The Secrecy

I actually applaud Apple for keeping the A4 so secret, even though it is personally killing me not to know the details. It’s just another fork of interest that will drive the media’s vectors back in the direction of the new iPad. Again, secrecy scores a point for Apple.

However, maybe the secrecy is because the A4 isn’t so custom after all? Perhaps it is simply an ARM Cortex A9-based multicore chip that happens to be quadcore. Does that sounds plausible? It does to me after reading up on ARM’s latest and greatest.

Apple has a somewhat unique and premium-class license with ARM which came by way of its PA Semi acquisition. Basically they can highly manipulate ARM chip architectures rather than simply package custom chips around ARM chip architectural modules. I suspect given the time Apple has had PA Semi that this first A4 chip is not as customized as Apple could eventually make it. But here are some basics that might exist in the A4 now:

A4 Possible and Known Internals:

• ARM Cortex A9-based architecture, modified by Apple
• Quadcore (?)
• 1 Ghz main frequency
• 2 MB L2 Cache
• 45 nanometer process
• 300 milliwatt max power use
• ARM NEON Processing Media Engine (?)

That’s the shortlist. Some of this we know and some of this we may not know for quite some time. You can see some pictures in this article from yesterday. Check them out, one is of the ARM Cortex A9 architecture. Write us or comment below. We’d appreciate your thoughts.

Okay so the iPad is the name. I was hoping they would surprise us with something new and clever. Not! Clearly Jobs is a fully mature human being now, having gotten completely past Scully and the Newton MessagePad. So contrary to my earlier statement that he would distance the new device from the word “pad” Jobs’s new toy is in fact called the iPad. I have to admit it actually is better sounding than iSlate and iTablet…neither of which I cared much for.

The iPad – Details

The Apple iPad webpage just went live about 60 seconds ago. I’ve been reloading Apple.com for minutes now every 15 seconds. Hurray! It’s up. I have much to do today I’m going to make this blog post pretty short. The details that matter to us at Architosh are centered around this device’s raw power to handle large document images both in viewing capability and creation.

The A4

Apple is calling the new internally designed main processor (CPU) the A4. This is a PA Semi team produced chip, make no bones about it. This group has world-class expertise in high-performance/high-energy efficient chip design. That’s why Apple acquired them. That is why the US Government got hold of some of their first processors for military equipment–because they were that good.

Apple's PS Semi produced A4 processor in the new iPad. 1 Ghz chip may integrate graphics in a system-on-a-chip package. The A4 is likely based on a customization of an ARM processor design as Apple holds a special class license to ARM architectures which enables them to modify architectures.

The Apple A4 runs at 1-Ghz. It’s high-performance, lower-power system-on-a-chip custom silicon. We’ll have to dig around to find out who manufactured it and that will likely be easier to obtain than the internal architecture of the chip. That Apple will keep very close to their chest. We assume it is ARM architecture-based, but that’s not taking us all the way to where we really want to go.

Some of the details we now appear to know are flowing in across various sources on the Net. Engadget is claiming the A4 design is not just ARM architecture based, as we mentioned above, but based on the very latest Cortex A9 series multicore architecture. This chip was first discussed by ARM back in mid year 2009.

The ARM Cortex A9 can be up to a Quadcore multicore chip, as seen in this diagram. Credit: ARM.

Key to the Cortex A9 architecture is that like the Cortex A8 (which the iPhone processor is currently based around) the A9 is multicore. Additionally, it is built on a 45-nanometer processes compared to the 65-nanometer process of the A8. This reduction in chip size decreases power consumption while enabling the chip to speed up. Unlike Intel’s Atom chip, the ARM Cortex A9 sips power at about 300 milliwatts or less, while the Atom uses up to 2 watts. 2 watts is tiny in the world of chips coming from Intel, but not as tiny as what is needed in cell phones. That explains why the Atom is hot with Netbooks but not with Apple.

If Engadget is correct about the Apple A4 being Cortex A9 based the next question to ask is does the A4 have two cores or four? And if  the A4 is indeed Cortex A9 with a quad core why isn’t Apple bragging about that? Seems like it is right up their alley.

Could it be that the number “4″ in A4 stands for quadcore?

Graphics

In terms of graphics Apple is providing no information on the GPU. So we can only imagine what is inside powering that gorgeous LED backlit display, which supports 1024 x 768 resolution max. With that display size one can really bring up pretty big PDF files of CAD or 3D images. That’s much better than doing it on the iPhone–something I’ve done quite often but not like I’d like due to some performance and screen size limitations.

Now looking through the lens of the ARM Cortex A4 as the likely customized engine in Apple’s A4 processor we have learned a bit more. This C/Net article says the Cortex A4 can handle 1080p high-def video but Apple’s spec and iPad pages do not claim this. Video seems to be limited to 720p.

Given what we think we know details of the A4 chip may consist of this:

• 1 Ghz frequency custom designed Apple CPU (via PA Semiconductor team)
• ARM Cortex A9 Multicore Architecture
• Quadcore (hence A4 name) or dual core only
• 1-2 MB of L2 Cache
• Single and double precision scalar Floating-Point (FPU)
• NEON Media Processing Engine (not sure…)

Anyway, until we learn more… In the meantime please enjoy the iPad pages at Apple.

The 2008 Mac touch Concept

Let’s recap the  2008 January details of what we imagined (both Sheehan and Architosh) the future touch-based device would be like. Here were are essentials:

• Apple multi-touch based input
• 11 inch sized screen
• iPhone like front device appearance
• solid state memory (64-128 GB)
• Intel-based primary CPU
• ATI graphics
• ARM secondary processing unit
• modified Mac OS X operating system

In the last two years we have learned quite a bit of information that makes this earlier attempt at imagining the Mac touch incorrect. For starters, as we look at the list above, it is the second half of those bullet points that get very particular and hence very subject to change. Yet some of our concepts about “use” are likely spot on.

One reader's vision of what a Mac touch would look like, pictured here next to Black Mac Book

The Updated View

First of all in terms of a name Apple will likely surprise us this time. iSlate, iTablet, iScreen, Mac touch…unlike the iPhone name, which was obvious, there is no single name that makes perfect sense. One name that hasn’t been bandied about too much is iPad. This harks back of course to the Newton MessagePad, which Steve Jobs despised. The word “Pad” is likely not in the upcoming product name. If we hark back further we can look at Apple’s Juggarnaut Design Investigation which studied a touch-based device this size and that device was given the name WorkCase. There are just so many possibilities…we’ll just have to wait and see!

Getting back to the details we can now make some 2010 revisions to our 2008 ideas. Here is what Architosh believes will likely be introduced today:

• 10 inch computer screen, touch-based (Multi-touch)
• next-generation iPhone OS (which itself is a variant of the basis of Mac OS X)
• ARM-Architecture CPU (in-house Apple design a very real possibility here!!)
• Imagination Technologies GPU (PowerVR variant)

Further Details on Apple’s Announcement Today

We stick to our belief that the new touch based device will be able to serve two very distinguished groups of users who do not need the true-typing experience that can only be found on a laptop. We said this two years ago and we stand by this assumption for this new product. So let’s recap these groups and how the new device fits them:

Group One: Media Consumers

As we mentioned before we believe that “consumer computing is now the place where the ledging edge now exist” and this has only grown stronger since that last article. The new Apple tablet device will be a game-changer in software and a best-in-breed in hardware for this category. Expect more or less all of this:

• Direct Kindle competition: Apple will change the rules about how we obtain and consume the written word (books, magazines and maybe webzines) in much the same way they did with music with iTunes.
• Gaming: Apple’s iPhone is a stunning success in the world of gaming and the new tablet device will continue to push this success even further. Leading edge OpenGL ES  combined with superior best-in-breed GPU hardware (Imagination Technologies?) and innovative API in the OS will propel this device forward.
• Movies, TV and Music: As we emphasized before a wired connection to iTunes on the computer (a la AppleTV) can make the slate device a great movie watching screen in bed or on the couch.

Group Two: Professional Vertical and Education

We also said that light typers need a device that is touch based and is ideal for the field. This means medicine, science, field workers in many industries, including AEC (architecture, engineering, construction) to education. We don’t see Apple emphasizing this today but the fundamental technologies that are there for gaming will make this a great platform for many of these vertical professional applications.

• Architecture, engineering and construction (AEC). This industry needs a great touch-screen with pen-input option platform badly. Viewing a big book is really no different than viewing a big set of construction drawings. Multi-touch opens up so many possibilities.
• Medicine is an ideal place for the new tablet from Apple. Doctors today already use the iPhone and iPod touch for similar use today
• Sciences: field and lab can utilize a touch-based device
• Field workers in all industries today rely on a multitude of platforms but none of them have the promise and capability of the iPhone OS and eco-system of software development and distribution

Closing Comments

Apple’s future will be revealed at 1:00pm EST as Steve Jobs hits the stage in San Francisco. It will be exciting to see what he introduces. We know that Apple has been working on a fifth product category for many years because Jobs said so years ago.

What will really be stunning today is if Apple has based the device on its own silicon design–namely that it has utilized its PA Semi group it acquired a few years ago to design a custom ARM Architecture main processor (CPU). This will mark a big moment for Apple for it will mean that the company is willing to compete with Intel and other semi-conductor designers head-to-head in order to differentiate itself from its competition.

According to a report by the Enterprise Desktop Alliance, 74 percent of companies plan to expand Mac use within their companies. 314 companies took the survey and only 2 percent said they would be decreasing the use of Macs within their companies. The survey cited both productivity gains and employee preference as the main reasons enterprises are adopting more Macs within their organizations. Lower cost of ownership is also playing an important role. Of the IT managers in the survey nearly 60 percent are managing more than 100 Macs within a wide range of enterprise-class companies. To read the full report go here.

No. 2 – Apple to preview iPhone OS X 3.0 at Town Hall Event

Apple invited press to a special Town Hall style event to take an early look at the iPhone 3.0 firmware update. Apple intends to show the IT press that the company plans to stay on the bleeding edge of mobile operating system software and not fall behind its key rivals such as the new Palm-pre with its advanced Web-OS. 

No. 3 – Apple Set to Introduce Netbook-like Device this Summar/Fall

Taiwanese touch panel maker claims working order for Apple. Wintek, according to this post on Forbes, is set to supply touch panels for an yet-to-be-named Apple device. This maybe the long-awaited and anticipated Mac touch Architosh has written about in the past (see images). 

Apple is not the same position as its OEM computer-maker competition. The company’s regular-sized laptops continue to be hot sellers, meaning the company is not under pressure to deliver and compete in the low-cost Netbook market. This means Apple will likely wait to deliver something that changes the overall game for a device that is touch-based and fits between its popular iPhone and iPod touch devices and its wildly popular Mac mobile lineup. This future device may also be powered by a chip from Apple’s PA Semi division. 

No. 4 – Apple’s App Store Now at 25,000 Applications and Growing

Apple’s App Store is now at 25,000 applications and still growing. A report on AppleInsider says the store is nearing a pace of $1 billion in annual revenue. Apple has accomplished with the App Store in just nine months what Microsoft has taken nine years to accomplish. 

“The iPhone App Store has redefined the smartphone industry,” said Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf. “In a game of ‘follow the leader’, most operating system platforms, including Android, Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian, announced they were opening similar online stores.”

No. 5 – Snow Leopard to launch June 8

Infoworld.com has a report claiming that Apple’s next operating system, Snow Leopard, will be rolled out June 8 during the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), which takes place June 6-12, 2009. 

Is Snow Leopard Apple’s Secret Business Weapon? (see Infoworld report).

Apple has not published the schedule for WWDC 2009 yet. However, reports are coming out of information listed at the Moscone Center.

Roughly Drafted dissects the three types of “disruption in technology” in this finely thought out piece here. Daniel Eran Dilger has written a very interesting article illustrates the differences between what he calls Conventional Disruption, Dropped Ball Disruption, and Fantasy Disruption. 

What distinguishes his article for me is the notion of the three types. This is compared of course to Clayton Christensen’s landmark book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail.”  BusinessWEEK actually has the first chapter to Christensen’s book here. If you have read this book then you will find the Roughly Drafted article interesting to you. It adds another layer of thought to what Christensen so deftly defines. This is all very useful reading for people in technology and in technology investing. I highly recommend it. 

No. 2 – Apeer Comes to the Mac

For those in the business and enterprise space this might excite you. A hot new software product in the collaboration space is by a company called Apeer, Inc. This week they announced that they will unveil a Mac version at conference in Los Angeles. 

Apeer touts it has the world’s first “all-in-one group communication and collaboration” platform with Apeer Professional. A new and unique product Apeer enables synchronous and instant multi-user exchanges using multimedia and documents. All parties can simultaneously view photos, hear music, see videos in real time over the Internet, all in one window. To discuss things with each other Apeer supports built in voice and chat. You can read more about it here.

No. 3 – Apple’s Mac mini and AppleTV may just become one

Yes, this my hunch at least. ArsTechnica has a story telling Apple Mac mini fans to “just be patient.” But patient for what? It appears that an Apple executive tipped off that Apple has something afoot for the mini. Everyone knows of course that Apple’s hobby, AppleTV is still just a hobby but Jobs is being coy about that and has been since the start. Apple clearly has aspirations about the TV, movies and the iTunes Store. In fact, couldn’t it also be possible that PA Semi folks at Apple are working on a specialized chip for the future AppleTV? 

No. 4 – Whose the Real Father of the iPod?

Cringley has really outdone himself this time. In this illuminating read Robert X. Cringley of PBS has concocted a grand chess game strategy behind the departure of Tony Fadell and the hiring of IBM’s Mark Papermaster. 

Moreover, Cringley goes on to say that Jobs really wants Papermaster to head up the PA Semi folks for a secret line of scalable processors (main board cpu’s) that are “optimized for Snow Leopard and beyond.” But in order to throw off the judge he needed to put Papermaster in Tony’s position because heading up the iPod and iPhone division means putting Mark Papermaster into a consumer product line and that means nothing about what he is doing centers on the IT enterprise or the business of computers. Pretty neat, huh? 

And remember what I wrote last week about this. What does the Noncompete Agreement really say? There are three levels to the noncompete clauses. One centers on being a “significant competitor” to IBM. They aren’t even in the same business arenas. Two, a “major competitor” of the company. Same as one. No. And three, “engages in competition with business units or divisions of IBM.” 

This last one is the the catch. Apple’s PA Semi division does, will and can engage in direct competition with Big Blue’s semiconductor business. 

No. 5 – Of Luke Skywalker’s Speeder and the Future of Microchips

Okay, so we all know that in Star Wars there is a whole range of technology wonders that may or may not ever come to pass in our life here on Earth. Or anybody’s life here on Earth. The possibility of a real lightsaber is one of them — unfortunately. Boo…I always wanted one. 

Now researches at UC Berkley are blazing ahead with a new technique in focusing light rays in a process called “plasmonic lithography” and it promises to get those little patterns etched onto silicon-based chips reduced to even tinier scales, thus shrinking chips while etching more circuitry onto them. 

Plasmonic lithography converts light into waves called plasmons, a type of radiation that unfortunately doesn’t radiate very far. So, in order to get such tiny waves of light etched into silicon one must use a non-physical, non-mechanical cushion, thus the “air bearings” technique. Air bearings enable the suspension of the key lens to get within 20 nanometers above the surface of the chip during the etching process. So…remember thinking, “how does Luke’s speeder actually float about the surface of Tatooine?” 

Ah…perhaps it was air bearings?

Mark Papermaster, a senior vice president at IBM, has apparently taken a job with Apple computer and is expected to start working for Apple next month, according to reports. However, IBM has filed suit this week against Papermaster in a US District Court in Manhattan to stop Papermaster from joining Apple. The basis of the case is a breach in Papermaster’s Noncompetition Agreement he signed with IBM in 2006. That agreement states that Papermaster cannot join a firm that competes with IBM within one year of his termination of employment.  Mark Papermaster has been with IBM for 26 years and is a member of IBM’s elite I&VT (Integration & Values Team), which includes IBM’s top 300 senior managers and thus has wide access to company intellectual property and trade secrets, including top secret IBM strategy. 

IBM’s Case: Noncompete Agreement Details

The details of the IBM Noncompetition Agreement are significant. The agreement states that Papermaster agrees that he will not (within 1 year of termination) “engage in or associate with (a) any ‘Business Enterprise’ or (b) any significant competitor or major competitor of the Company…”.  By “Business Enterprise” the agreement means any entity or entity that owns or controls a significant interest in any entity that engages in competition with the “business units or divisions of the Company” (IBM) in which you have worked at any time during the two year period prior to the termination. The agreement further defines “engage in” completely to include both consultant and contractor status, so even if Papermaster didn’t join Apple as an employee he would still be barred from engaging with Apple. 

IBM’s case based on this Noncompetition Agreement seems to hinge on Apple being deemed:

• a “significant competitor” to IBM
• a “major competitor of the company” {that being IBM}
• or an entity that engages in competition with business units or divisions of IBM

Mark Papermaster’s Role at Apple

It is not clear what Papermaster’s role would be at Apple. But IBM is hell bent on him not joining Apple. The company offered him a substantial pay increase to keep him. Additionally, it is reported IBM offered to pay him one year’s salary if he would just refrain from joining a competitor. A MacNN post notes that he was expecting to work closely with Steve Jobs.

Intel’s Killing Games…

Alex quotes Mark Rein who famously stated: “Intel are killing games.”

Yes, Intel chips, hence the plural. Mark was referring to the fact that Intel’s Integrated Graphics are weak and cannot run games well at all (and pro apps for that matter). Yet they are, as Alex notes, hugely popular with notebook OEMs because they are cheap. With such large volumes of such machines in circulation it has forced developers of games to develop around them. That of course is bad. Developers are wasting precious development resources trying to make the best out a mass of “low-performers” while ignoring the capabilities of much higher performing (but more rare…and more costly!) mobile GPU architectures. 

Nvidia Saves Games…

In comes Nvidia. And with the new 9400M platform you get blazing performance over Intel’s Integrated Graphics — as demonstrated beautifully in Apple’s newest MacBooks.

So is Apple in love with Nvidia now? Is that why two Intel executives recently got scolded for bashing the iPhone at an Intel developer summit in Asia? First the uncertainty of the PA Semi acquisition and now the Nvidia 9400M. Both of those moves amply demonstrate that Jobs & Co. have no cronies in Cupertino. For them, it’s all business, all the time. And so…while it may not be love, it certainly isn’t getting any warmer between Apple and Intel. 

To read Alex’s complete post go here.

http://themacgamer.com/2008/10/23/apple-heart-nvidia/

The Standard has a good article here. Of all the companies it mentions that Apple should buy the one I would agree makes the best sense is Nvidia. The graphics chip maker could be bought six times over with Apple’s available cash. Once more, Nvidia has been delivering superb new GPU and related technologies for the past few years, its CUDA architecture is of particular note. With Nvidia in Apple’s hands the geniuses within its PA Semi acquisition and the geniuses within Nvidia could do magical things together. It’s truly exciting to think about!

But There’s More…

I’ve been writing about specific acquisitions this past year that make sense strategically for protecting and growing Apple’s “Creatives” market. Specifically I’ve put out the notion that Apple should possibly buy Nemetschek AG of Germany as a solid AEC industry play. I’ve also written about a Gehry Technolgies buy. Both are interesting for a variety of reasons. And both would excite the AEC (architecture/engineering/construction) market and its millions of users.

So in light of that it’s interesting to see somebody outside of the CAD press discuss the idea that Apple should buy Autodesk. But that is just what David Morgenstern of ZDNet did today. Yes…it seems Apple’s big cash numbers have gotten the speculation engines oh-running. I can hear them churning across the blogosphere. The CAD blogs and press will no doubt pick up on this. It is always interesting when the general press catches up to what some of us in the CAD press have been saying.

Personally I’m not sure buying Autodesk would be a brilliant move for Apple. They would pay a premium for some de-facto industry standard apps that are in truth fairly mediocre at best. In time such apps will die-out. On the other hand, Morgenstern is correct is stating that  Apple’s approach to its customers is similar to Apple’s. This was the point I was making earlier in the year.

Would an Apple-Autodesk or Apple-Nvidia acquisition make sense to you? Login and share you thoughts below.

At the event then Gehry Technologies CEO, Malcolm Davies, PhD, made a series of interesting statements during his otherwise very good presentation. This of course made the presentation all the more memorable. In discussing the industry’s difficulty in adopting a BIM methodology, Davies said that he felt BIM tools were still too difficult to use and could be made much easier. He cited, to many people’s surprise, Apple’s iPod as an example of power and ease of use, and how the company revolutionized the digital music experience. He expressed that such a transformation needed to take place with BIM software.

That idea was tantalizing — do to BIM what Apple had done to digital music. Yet even more interesting was Davies’ comment about Gehry and Steve Jobs being friends (or the intimation that they were friends) and the intimation that there had been some discussion about what Jobs needed to do was to buy Frank Gehry’s company and revolutionize BIM.

That idea that Apple buy Gehry Technologies and revolutionize the way architects and engineers design and develop building designs was very thought provoking, on several levels. Firstly, if any company could revolutionize the user interface of what a BIM (building information modeling) tool should really look like it was Apple. Apple is the one company with the deepest talent and history of making ground-breaking user interfaces. The types of UI’s that are game changers.

Secondly, Apple already has the experience in buying very highend professional software tools and streamlining them and bringing them back to market at radically lower price points, thereby quickly establishing momentum and leadership in specific software sectors. Apple has already done this in film, sound and effects software.

Thirdly, Apple is all about forward-looking technology and BIM is perfectly avant-garde enough for Apple. Richard Kerris (former Sr. Director of Worldwide Developer Relations) , who is no longer with Apple but was very much responsible for getting Alias’ Maya on the Mac platform, once told me that Apple (meaning Steve Jobs) wasn’t interested in markets that were already established, they were interested in “the next revolution,” akin to the desktop publishing revolution that helped cement the Mac in the history of computing in the first place. If you look at the history of the company’s recent hits that isn’t entirely so but the general theory and strategy still holds.

This is why BIM, green design and eco-oriented technology tools — together as a next revolution — are perfectly suited for Apple’s touch.

However, as much as the idea of Gehry Technologies and Appletogether sounds really cool perhaps this is not the best direction Apple could take if it so desired to aggressively enter the architecture and BIM markets. Perhaps a smarter acquisition might be Nemetschek of Germany which due to several acquisitions in the past few years has rounded out nicely as a formidable software powerhouse in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) markets.

Apple’s vast $19.4 billion and growing cash assets, its increasingly enterprise worthiness, its recent PA Semi acquisition and stellar software prowess all bode well for it to enter a market that is tangent to its other professional markets (which architecture is). On top of that, Apple is already 2-3 times more popular in architecture than it is in the general computing market.

Tomorrow we’ll look more closely at Nemetschek AG and Apple.

Got Feedback? Email me.

Apple VM for PA Semi

Today however Apple may soon be the new owner of a microprocessor design company and it might behoove them to see to it that virtualization capabilities play a front-burner role in the development of new mobile Internet devices (MIDs). Since Apple has been developing its OS X operating system on both PowerPC and Intel x86 for more than six years now, it is capable of deploying OS X on both chip architectures. It has also written OS X for the iPhone and iPod touch on the ARM architecture, a chip architecture dominant in the smartphone and small device markets.

Having OS X on so many chip architectures (three exactly) doesn’t seem too problematic for Apple at the moment and affords them a great degree of hardware flexibility. However developing its own VM (virtual machine) technology and deploying it on some of these product platforms (Mac, iPod, iPhone) will gain them even more freedom in deploying their software and others across all three product lines more quickly.

More interestingly, an Apple VM deployed on future PA Semi PowerPC designs could give Apple a new “angle” into the world of game consoles and mobile gaming — a world now dominated by the PowerPC architecture. This is especially interesting in light of Nintendo’s resurgence and its prolific use of the PowerPC architecture within a few generations of game consoles. A licensing agreement with Nintendo could allow Apple to build a different category of mobile devices that play Nintendo games, courtesy a virtualization machine.

PA Semi – Why Apple Bought Them

Whether Apple will start investing in VM technology for future mobile devices is anyone’s guess. But such a plan could allow a breach into the PowerPC-driven game console world that bring about a flood of new possibilities for Apple.

Though it will take some time to figure out why Apple really bought PA Semi, we would have to agree with Roughly Drafted’s assessmentthat Apple wants to build out more specialized proprietary hardware in order to compete and differentiate its products in the mobile Internet devices market (this includes the iPod, the iPhone and future mobile devices Apple has not delivered to market yet). One thing is for sure. PA Semi brings to Apple some stellar talent and the future of Apple’s products look extremely attractive from this particular — “post-PA Semi” — view.

Related Articles

2002 Architosh report discussed Apple’s moves to low-power PowerPC chips for a plurality of new devices

In the final section of an IT reported aimed at understanding the AEC market, Architosh discussed an “inevitable change in microprocessor architectures” where a “new age of compute power and data access, where one’s desire to compute on data is not limited to the physical confines of office or home.”

The purpose of the “forward looking analysis” section of the AEC IT report study in 2002 was to explain the rationale for both sticking withor adopting the Macintosh platform. The report made bold claims and statements that at the time may have been regarded at their best as “misplaced” or at their worst as an “over-reaching” argument for Mac adoption. However they were based on a rationale has turned out to be solidly conclusive in the end.

The Discussion of ARM and PowerPC

The report read: “This projection foretells of a change in the way engineers architect microprocessors.”

Back in 2002 Intel was producing Pentiums with staggering long pipelines and the chip war dialog was centered on ever-increasing frequency numbers. The report continues in the next paragraph that: “More importantly power-consumption on equal footing with performance is vital to the types of new wireless devices that will bring data and entertainment to any device, anywhere, at any time. It is important to notice that this paradigm shift in processor design is resulting in different research and development (R&D) paths for new and existing players in the microprocessor space.”

The report at the time cited IBM exclusively for understanding the shift in microprocessor development, while being critical of AMD’s and Intel’s performance over energy philosophy. The report also positively cited ARM — which currently powers the Apple iPhone.

Louis Gerstner’s (former IBM CEO) Second Internet

A whole page of the report cites and embraces the former IBM CEO’s long term vision of a Second Internet Era characterized by “ubiquitous high-speed wired (and wireless) access.”

The report reads: “In this second phase, people will easily connect to information from a plethora of different devices capable of playing and producing all forms of media (text, voice, image, video, sound, motion). In such a world of many different types of devices at a huge range of price points, microprocessor architectures will require a policy of energy consumption and specialized processing over crude processing performance.”

Apple and PA Semi

It is in this context that Apple’s move to acquire PA Semi addresses the emergence of the Second Internet Era, as described by Lou Gerstner. In the second era leaner processor design is the goal and things like “total talk time” are the new bragging rights. Locking horns in a megahertz race no longer matters for competitors in microprocessor design.

Our 2002 report concluded that Apple would emerge with distinct advantages. “In our view, IBM’s forward-looking vision with processor design places them [Apple] in a strategic position in the industry going forward.” Lou Gerstner believed that the battle for the datacenter processing supremacy was more lucrative in the Second Internet Era than the aging PC model. “That is why Intel wanted Itanium in the first place”, reads the report.

What we couldn’t see at the time would be the emergence of PA Semi — a company that was not yet created — that they would emerge as a powerful force in microprocessor design utilizing the PowerPC architecture.

However with energy concerns far greater than they are today, the emphasis on low-power forms for chip design benefits both the datacenter (like never before) and the mobile Internet device market equally. Apple’s real plans for PA Semi remain unclear at the device level, but at the more macro level Apple can utilize PA Semi’s core strengths across a full spectrum — from the server in the data center (Xserve) to the next amazing mobile device from Apple…whatever that device just happens to be!

Editor’s Notes:

The 2002 AEC IT CAD Study report discussed in this article is currently out of print. It was originally available for $50.USD to non-members of AIWUG and was acquired by AEC firms, CAD software companies serving the AEC market, several universities and the US and French governments.

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