Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

[Eug]

M1
5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LP-DDR4
16 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 12 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache
(Apple claims the 4 high-effiency cores alone perform like a dual-core Intel MacBook Air)

8-core iGPU (but there is a 7-core variant, likely with one inactive core)
128 execution units
Up to 24576 concurrent threads
2.6 Teraflops
82 Gigatexels/s
41 gigapixels/s

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Products:
$999 ($899 edu) 13" MacBook Air (fanless) - 18 hour video playback battery life
$699 Mac mini (with fan)
$1299 ($1199 edu) 13" MacBook Pro (with fan) - 20 hour video playback battery life

Memory options 8 GB and 16 GB. No 32 GB option (unless you go Intel).

It should be noted that the M1 chip in these three Macs is the same (aside from GPU core number). Basically, Apple is taking the same approach which these chips as they do the iPhones and iPads. Just one SKU (excluding the X variants), which is the same across all iDevices (aside from maybe slight clock speed differences occasionally).

EDIT:



M1 Pro 8-core CPU (6+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 16-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 24-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 32-core GPU

M1 Pro and M1 Max discussion here:

Page 78 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 78 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M1 Ultra discussion here:

Page 109 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 109 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M2 discussion here:

Page 127 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 127 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

Second Generation 5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LPDDR5, up to 24 GB and 100 GB/s
20 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 16 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache

10-core iGPU (but there is an 8-core variant)
3.6 Teraflops

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Hardware acceleration for 8K h.264, h.264, ProRes

M3 Family discussion here:

Page 215 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 215 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

M4 Family discussion here:

Page 263 - Discussion - Apple Silicon SoC thread

Page 263 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

forums.anandtech.com

 

[Curious_Inquirer]

Here’s a great article on Apples modem.
https://open.substack.com/pub/irrat...=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
The relevant section on the modem.

[1] Background on Apple C1 Modem
​

"This modem has been in development since 2019.

6 years.

Apple had to settle with Qualcomm because Intel’s 5G modem was such garbage the carriers would never allow it on their networks.
In short, Apple lost the battle but vowed to continue fighting the war.

The terms of the settlement made it very obvious what the plan was.

• Apple pays license fees and agrees to buy modems until 2025.
• Apple has the right to unilaterally extend the agreement until March 2027.

Goal always was to become 100% self-sufficient in modems (all regions, sub-6 and mmWave, all iPhone SKUs) by 2025. Avoid the extension. Stop paying QTL royalties ASAP.

Problem is…. the Apple cellular modem program has been a radioactive dumpster fire.

Apple has spent an obscene amount of money to get this pile of garbage modem working. There are (educated guess) over 6K engineers working on this ONE MODEM for the past 6 (six) years… and it still is crap.

Part of the problem was where these engineers came from.

You have a team with…

• Apple engineers
• ex-Intel [Cellular] engineers (some of the dumbest in the industry)
  • Without a doubt the most incompetent group to have ever existed within Intel.
  • Bob “Clown” Swan must have been delighted to unload so much dead weight upon Tim Apple.
  • Intel was blessed to get $1B in payment.
  • These 🤡 engineers probably had negative net productivity.
• ex-Qualcomm engineers
• even a few ex-Broadcom engineers

These people HATE each other.

There are so many insane/funny stories I could tell you about this saga, but it requires obscure context and is probably a waste of time.

Just trust me that this program is the most epic failure within semiconductors within the last 20 years. So much worse than AMD Bulldozer.

After multiple catastrophic delays, this abomination of a modem is finally shipping. It has already shaken up RFFE. Just look at the chaos at Skyworks and Qorvo.

The iPhone 16e is going to use this internal modem globally but has no mmWave support.

This is very important, and I will explain why in the next section.

What matters for stocks is who gets content, who loses (its Qualcomm… no shit), and how the ramp is shaped.

I have access to Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs sell-side models.

I strongly believe the street is extremely wrong on how fast this internal modem is going to ramp.

[2] Background on Practical 5G
​

This section is condensed to the bare minimum.

First, there are two types of 5G.

1. sub-6
   1. “normal” frequency bands
   2. maximum of 100 MHz per band
2. mmWave
   1. Mostly useless.
   2. Required in USA market.
   3. Increasingly important in mainland China.
   4. Lots of extra engineering problems.
   5. Maximum of 400 MHz per band.
   6. Reliant on high carrier aggregation to function at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands

Carrier Aggregation is the term for having a device connect to multiple frequency bands at the same time. The lingo is “CC” which stands for “component carrier”.

For example, a 4 CC configuration means four bands aggregated.

The point of carrier aggregation is to blend coverage. Give users a balance of capacity and range.

Each carrier across the world has their own frequency bands and preferred network configuration.

A global modem needs to be compatible with every carrier in every region, for every combination of equipment (E///, Nokia, Samsung Infra, Huawei, ZTE, …) and every band combination used by the carriers.

This is a nightmare.

This is why MediaTek cannot supply Apple for the iPhone, only small things like Apple watch. Their 5G modem is very good but it does not work for many regions and high complexity CC configs.

Wireless carriers are the gatekeepers. A bad modem can turn every phone/UE/device using it into a jammer.

Wired (DOCSIS) cable networks also only allow approved modems on their networks.

Real engineering reasons justify this kind of aggressive gatekeeping by the carriers.

Apple **aggressively lobbied** the carriers to let their internal modem on the networks back in 2023 and 2024. The carriers refused. Think about how powerful Apple is.

The fact that this Apple C1 modem is now shipping globally is a huge accomplishment.

It will be very interesting to see what band combos are supported as the iPhone 16e launches over the coming weeks.

Cellular networks are intuitively similar to InfiniBand “credit based” flow control.

A phone (UE) can only transmit data if it has an uplink grant. It can only get downlink data if it has a downlink grant.

Carriers regularly discriminate against devices.

Business customers get grant priority.

Budget customers (Mint, Boost Mobile, Cricket, …) with “unlimited data” are de-prioritized. Back of the line.

Devices from other regions (people traveling internationally), unlocked devices, and imported devices (say an American importing a China-only Xiaomi phone) are aggressively limited in terms of grants and allowed CC configs.

I strongly suspect the carriers have aggressively limited what band combos iPhone 16e can have. They also probably made some changes to their schedulers to mitigate the blast radius.

mmWave is a hard requirement for 20-30% of the market in 2025, primarily driven by USA with some pressure in mainland China.

It is ok for Apple’s internal modem to not have mmWave support right now. But if a large portion of devices (59% of USA devices lol) don’t have mmWave, the carriers are gona have congestion problems.

It is reasonable for Apple to get mmWave working in limited configurations (2-4 CC) by 2027. Most of the difficult work has been finished."

There’s a lot of images embedded in the article that is useful to look over but I couldn’t embed that many images on my phone so I quoted the relevant parts. Also I disagree with the statement that Intel has the dumbest engineers in the semiconductor industry as a whole. I think he was talking about the cellular industry as that was the focus of the article, that’s why I put Cellular in [].

Very interesting info on how carriers prioritize business users and locked contract customers getting the best uplinks over unlocked devices, travelers and budget customers. Also how hard it is designing a global modem. Didn’t know that Mediatek was the supplier of the Apple Watch. Regardless it’s a massive achievement to ship this modem globally, well done Apple. Now let’s see how the roadmap works out over successive generations.

 

[Curious_Inquirer]

Mediatek doesn’t have a global modem to offer to Apple probably only works in certain regions of the world. Also I don’t think even Samsung offers a global modem. And Apple designing their own modem was Critical to ensure their independence of Qualcomms painful margins and royalties. It was absolutely necessary to their ambitions to integrate cellular modems in many of their devices.

Edit: and do you think Apple of all companies would want to buy components as critical as Modems from Samsung? lots of tight integration and co design is necessary. Lots of secrets need to be shared to make all that work. Apple would never share trade secrets of that kind with their arch competitor in the smartphone space.

 

[mvprod123]

I'm simply bringing some perspective to the loads of rather self-congratulatory press releases. The development is very behind schedule and the finished product only fit to release on a budget phone with loads of other compromises. This is simply not the clear win the self developed 64bit cores in the iPhone and the subsequent migration of Macs from Intel that they executed was. (Vision Pro might be an example, but that lags Meta and suffered from high pricing and the lack of content behind the walled garden...)

Apple's MO under Cook is too focused on for product lines guaranteed to sell > 20mm units per year and emulating competitors, but Kudos to him for very deft navigation of their supply chain through politics and crises. I think they need to spend more cash on actually RELEASING riskier, smaller run product lines that could potentially be failures; they should then aggressively iterate on the successful ones.

If they don't, they risk being left behind by newer paradigms of user interface and edge processing which competitors have successfully brought to market. Perhaps they could do so through a different brand if they're worried about their image...

It's too early to say that the development is behind schedule. Let's see how C2 turns out.

 

[Glo.]

Would wait for more detailed reviews as it is as relatively difficult for review sites to test cellular subsystem performance compared to CPU/GPU performance as it is for companies implement (even a client-side accelerator for, never mind design) the 5G cellular networking standards. Nevermind the lack of mmWave (which is necessary as lower spectrum frequencies are simply running out of capacity):

1) This is not 1.0 (more like 2.5 or 3.0)...
2) It is unclear how carriers are configuring their cellular bands for this early release, lower performance model modem: it very likely not apples-to-apples...
3) The C1 early defaults to 4G whose towers have something like 5x the range as 5G and have worse network recovery characteristics:

4) Furthermore, Apple is intentionally making comparisons to just the specific modems which they use in other Apple models: notably NOT the Qualcomm X80 at 3nm but the X71 fabbed at Samsung 7nm which they intentionally picked for the iPhone 16 series instead of a faster model. They also have had a habit of throttling modems (which could have been run faster) in select product lines in the past to homogenize their supply chain diverse product line at the expense of product quality for an important cellphone feature.

It's a bit disappointing as an Apple customer and shareholder to see the fawning press tout edge-case advantages of an essentially inferior cellular subsystem which I think is diverting corporate resources and attention from its bread and butter client facing interface strengths such as rapidly aging features like Siri. Even with all their money, this seems like an obsessive holy war and a short-sighted, bean-counter initiated distraction for Apple in the end rather than an actual innovation or even a refinement.

For mobile devices, like phones and tablets, power efficiency is be-all-end-all metric.

Because of this, Apple modem is actually already superior to Qcomm, and in worst case scenario - equal to it.

 

[Raqia]

For mobile devices, like phones and tablets, power efficiency is be-all-end-all metric.

Because of this, Apple modem is actually already superior to Qcomm, and in worst case scenario - equal to it.

I don't think this has been concretely established yet. As good as Apple has been with other silicon disciplines, cellular subsystems are and will continue to be challenging for them.

 

[gdansk]

For mobile devices, like phones and tablets, power efficiency is be-all-end-all metric.

Well, low-utilization power efficiency I think. At least it is the most import to me. Even the most phone-addled minds have their phone sitting around doing nearly nothing for 2/3rd the day.

 

[Raqia]

Mediatek doesn’t have a global modem to offer to Apple probably only works in certain regions of the world. Also I don’t think even Samsung offers a global modem. And Apple designing their own modem was Critical to ensure their independence of Qualcomms painful margins and royalties. It was absolutely necessary to their ambitions to integrate cellular modems in many of their devices.

Edit: and do you think Apple of all companies would want to buy components as critical as Modems from Samsung? lots of tight integration and co design is necessary. Lots of secrets need to be shared to make all that work. Apple would never share trade secrets of that kind with their arch competitor in the smartphone space.

Arguably, more trade secrets flow Apple's way from such relationships than vice-versa. Hardly anyone who actually buys an iPhone thinks the cost of the network technologies and implementation provided by Qualcomm is "painful" next to hundreds in margins that Apple charges for things like an extra 256GB of upgraded storage. Many did notice the inferior connectivity of the Intel equipped iPhone 11...

 

[name99]

Here’s a great article on Apples modem.
https://open.substack.com/pub/irrat...=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
The relevant section on the modem.

[1] Background on Apple C1 Modem​

​

"This modem has been in development since 2019.

6 years.

Apple had to settle with Qualcomm because Intel’s 5G modem was such garbage the carriers would never allow it on their networks.
In short, Apple lost the battle but vowed to continue fighting the war.

The terms of the settlement made it very obvious what the plan was.

• Apple pays license fees and agrees to buy modems until 2025.
• Apple has the right to unilaterally extend the agreement until March 2027.

Goal always was to become 100% self-sufficient in modems (all regions, sub-6 and mmWave, all iPhone SKUs) by 2025. Avoid the extension. Stop paying QTL royalties ASAP.

Problem is…. the Apple cellular modem program has been a radioactive dumpster fire.

Apple has spent an obscene amount of money to get this pile of garbage modem working. There are (educated guess) over 6K engineers working on this ONE MODEM for the past 6 (six) years… and it still is crap.

Part of the problem was where these engineers came from.

You have a team with…

• Apple engineers
• ex-Intel [Cellular] engineers (some of the dumbest in the industry)
  • Without a doubt the most incompetent group to have ever existed within Intel.
  • Bob “Clown” Swan must have been delighted to unload so much dead weight upon Tim Apple.
  • Intel was blessed to get $1B in payment.
  • These 🤡 engineers probably had negative net productivity.
• ex-Qualcomm engineers
• even a few ex-Broadcom engineers

These people HATE each other.

There are so many insane/funny stories I could tell you about this saga, but it requires obscure context and is probably a waste of time.

Just trust me that this program is the most epic failure within semiconductors within the last 20 years. So much worse than AMD Bulldozer.

After multiple catastrophic delays, this abomination of a modem is finally shipping. It has already shaken up RFFE. Just look at the chaos at Skyworks and Qorvo.

The iPhone 16e is going to use this internal modem globally but has no mmWave support.

This is very important, and I will explain why in the next section.

What matters for stocks is who gets content, who loses (its Qualcomm… no shit), and how the ramp is shaped.

I have access to Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs sell-side models.

I strongly believe the street is extremely wrong on how fast this internal modem is going to ramp.

[2] Background on Practical 5G​

​

This section is condensed to the bare minimum.

First, there are two types of 5G.

1. sub-6
   1. “normal” frequency bands
   2. maximum of 100 MHz per band
2. mmWave
   1. Mostly useless.
   2. Required in USA market.
   3. Increasingly important in mainland China.
   4. Lots of extra engineering problems.
   5. Maximum of 400 MHz per band.
   6. Reliant on high carrier aggregation to function at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5G_NR_frequency_bands

Carrier Aggregation is the term for having a device connect to multiple frequency bands at the same time. The lingo is “CC” which stands for “component carrier”.

For example, a 4 CC configuration means four bands aggregated.

The point of carrier aggregation is to blend coverage. Give users a balance of capacity and range.

Each carrier across the world has their own frequency bands and preferred network configuration.

A global modem needs to be compatible with every carrier in every region, for every combination of equipment (E///, Nokia, Samsung Infra, Huawei, ZTE, …) and every band combination used by the carriers.

This is a nightmare.

This is why MediaTek cannot supply Apple for the iPhone, only small things like Apple watch. Their 5G modem is very good but it does not work for many regions and high complexity CC configs.

Wireless carriers are the gatekeepers. A bad modem can turn every phone/UE/device using it into a jammer.

Wired (DOCSIS) cable networks also only allow approved modems on their networks.

Real engineering reasons justify this kind of aggressive gatekeeping by the carriers.

Apple **aggressively lobbied** the carriers to let their internal modem on the networks back in 2023 and 2024. The carriers refused. Think about how powerful Apple is.

The fact that this Apple C1 modem is now shipping globally is a huge accomplishment.

It will be very interesting to see what band combos are supported as the iPhone 16e launches over the coming weeks.

Cellular networks are intuitively similar to InfiniBand “credit based” flow control.

A phone (UE) can only transmit data if it has an uplink grant. It can only get downlink data if it has a downlink grant.

Carriers regularly discriminate against devices.

Business customers get grant priority.

Budget customers (Mint, Boost Mobile, Cricket, …) with “unlimited data” are de-prioritized. Back of the line.

Devices from other regions (people traveling internationally), unlocked devices, and imported devices (say an American importing a China-only Xiaomi phone) are aggressively limited in terms of grants and allowed CC configs.

I strongly suspect the carriers have aggressively limited what band combos iPhone 16e can have. They also probably made some changes to their schedulers to mitigate the blast radius.

mmWave is a hard requirement for 20-30% of the market in 2025, primarily driven by USA with some pressure in mainland China.

It is ok for Apple’s internal modem to not have mmWave support right now. But if a large portion of devices (59% of USA devices lol) don’t have mmWave, the carriers are gona have congestion problems.

It is reasonable for Apple to get mmWave working in limited configurations (2-4 CC) by 2027. Most of the difficult work has been finished."

There’s a lot of images embedded in the article that is useful to look over but I couldn’t embed that many images on my phone so I quoted the relevant parts. Also I disagree with the statement that Intel has the dumbest engineers in the semiconductor industry as a whole. I think he was talking about the cellular industry as that was the focus of the article, that’s why I put Cellular in [].

Very interesting info on how carriers prioritize business users and locked contract customers getting the best uplinks over unlocked devices, travelers and budget customers. Also how hard it is designing a global modem. Didn’t know that Mediatek was the supplier of the Apple Watch. Regardless it’s a massive achievement to ship this modem globally, well done Apple. Now let’s see how the roadmap works out over successive generations.

You have to remember that a LOT of people have been very invested in saying that the Apple modem will suck.
So what do they do when it ships and doesn't suck?
Well, you scramble back to a position of claiming that sure, it looks OK, but actually it sucks in <technical ways that you won't ever see because reasons>.

And sure, I get it. This is irrationalAnalyst's business, and s/he often says interesting things. But interesting is not the same as trustworthy...


Other things you have to remember in characterizing the reviews coming out include
- Geekerwan's lab tests, while technically impressive for a small operation, only test SISO performance. We can't know the extent to which they generalize to MIMO (ie real world) either for better or worse.
- The real world train tests test high doppler situations which are somewhat specialized. Again we don't know the extent to which things are better (or worse) in the highway situation which is the case most of us in the US or Europe care about.
- China uses TDD-LTE rather than FDD as used by the rest of the world.

All three of these are not excuses so much as pointing out that, regardless of how hard you think it is to compare modems, it's a dozen times harder.
For example it's at least plausible that in each of these cases, Apple skewed development time so as to optimize for the case that (right now anyway) corresponds to more money, namely the US (FDD, car speed doppler, MIMO) rather than China specifics. Who knows? Contrast this with the Huawei modem which performed spectacularly in Geekerwan's tests (but, quite possibly, has its design optimized, for obvious reasons, in the other direction, for China's specific cellular choices).

 

[Doug S]

This sounds like exactly like how I would expect Qualcolmm to respond and looks to me you are projecting your personal feelings instead of looking at facts. This is Apple's first modem and it will be Apple's worst modem and certainly is better than Intel's old modems.

Is he a Qualcomm employee? Because you're right his posts here do read exactly like what I'd expect a Qualcomm mouthpiece to say.

Apple shouldn’t have to pay Qualcomm forever for it’s grossly overpriced modems.There is a reason why Google stopped using Qualcomm modems. Sure Apple won't compare to X80 because Apple doesn't use X80 modems, Geekerwan compared them though and Apple's modem is 20% more efficient,

It isn't even really about Apple saving money on Qualcomm's modems. Qualcomm stretches the idea of "FRAND" to the breaking point, by not only charging patent royalties based on the cost of the device they go in (so Apple is paying a lot more for the same cellular patents than the vendor of a $100 Android phone, even though they use the same patents in the same way) but in order to buy the chips they ALSO require licensing other smartphone related patents Qualcomm owns that don't necessarily have anything to do with the phone they go in.

That's the bs Apple wants to free themselves from. Yes they will still have to legally license Qualcomm's patents but once they are no longer buying any chips from Qualcomm the licensing of unrelated patents will be over. What's more, Apple will most likely be able to force Qualcomm into a broad cross licensing agreement covering cellular, CPU and other smartphone related stuff since while Qualcomm clearly dominates in the cellular front Apple is in the driver's seat with CPU patents (especially now that they have hired former Apple guys undoubtedly re-implementing some of the stuff they developed and patented at Apple) That would drop Apple's licensing cost with Qualcomm to zero.

We'll have to stay tuned for when the last Apple product with Qualcomm cellular in it goes off the price list, presumably in 2027 since that's when the deal with Qualcomm expires. I wouldn't be surprised to see another legal fight as Qualcomm will want to keep the patent licensing gravy train going, but they won't have Apple over a barrel this time needing to buy their chips, and Apple will have a large patent warchest they can use to fight back so I can't see how Qualcomm will have any choice but to agree to cross licensing in the end.

 

[Doug S]

Here’s a great article on Apples modem.

No it is a lot of bs.

Apple has spent an obscene amount of money to get this pile of garbage modem working. There are (educated guess) over 6K engineers working on this ONE MODEM for the past 6 (six) years… and it still is crap.

Still crap based on what? Seems to be pretty competitive with Qualcomm modems. Not quite their equal performance wise but it is version 1.0 after all. Already better power wise which is what Apple highly values. Me too - 5G is already fast enough, given a choice between a faster modem and a more power efficient modem I want the latter.

The iPhone 16e is going to use this internal modem globally but has no mmWave support.

Is the author really that stupid? None of Apple's "SE" iPhones have shipped with mmwave. Nor is that an issue "globally" since most of the world's mmwave deployment is in the US, and there's precious little of it. If I've ever been connected to mmwave I didn't look at my phone when it was, because I've never seen it. And I've had phones capable of it for 2 1/2 years.

Carrier Aggregation is the term for having a device connect to multiple frequency bands at the same time. The lingo is “CC” which stands for “component carrier”.

For example, a 4 CC configuration means four bands aggregated.

The point of carrier aggregation is to blend coverage. Give users a balance of capacity and range.

Nope, he's wrong. It is mostly used for more speed. Most carriers will only permit two carrier connections per endpoint device when they're congested. The idea that the C1's 4 is too few is loony tunes.

Each carrier across the world has their own frequency bands and preferred network configuration.

A global modem needs to be compatible with every carrier in every region, for every combination of equipment (E///, Nokia, Samsung Infra, Huawei, ZTE, …) and every band combination used by the carriers.

This is a nightmare.

This is why MediaTek cannot supply Apple for the iPhone, only small things like Apple watch. Their 5G modem is very good but it does not work for many regions and high complexity CC configs.

Again, based on what? He provides zero evidence, he's just a guy with a grudge against Apple (or perhaps a big investment in Qualcomm)

It will be very interesting to see what band combos are supported as the iPhone 16e launches over the coming weeks.

The information was published when the 16e was announced. Did he write this before it was even out, and he's complaining not only before any benchmarking is done but before the band list was published on Apple's site?

mmWave is a hard requirement for 20-30% of the market in 2025, primarily driven by USA with some pressure in mainland China.

Wow this guy is so stupid. NO ONE needs mmwave. If everyone's mmwave capability in their phones was switched off today, you'd hardly notice except at a soccer game or maybe Times Square. It just isn't used very much. Even the cities that have it cover only a tiny fraction of the city.

It is reasonable for Apple to get mmWave working in limited configurations (2-4 CC) by 2027. Most of the difficult work has been finished."

Guess he missed the rumors that claim C2 will have mmwave and 6x6. So even his stupid points only apply to C1 unless the C2 rumors are wrong.

 

[The Hardcard]

I don't think this has been concretely established yet. As good as Apple has been with other silicon disciplines, cellular subsystems are and will continue to be challenging for them.

I don’t think it will continue to be challenging. At least not moreso than Qualcomm and the other players. Any company or individual can enter any field if they can hire the people who know how to do it. Apple did that.

If McDonald’s hired 1500 cellular engineers and managers each from Qualcomm, Apple, Mediatek, and Huawei with half of them having at least a decade of experience designing, validating, and troubleshooting cellular modems, plus you paid them for 5 to 8 years and fully financed their work and the support structure they need, McDonald’s could be selling Happy Modems for use in 2033 connected devices.

There is the issue of patents and intellectual property, but barring some bombshell lawsuit upcoming, Apple has already navigated that. Now they just have to iterate and advance on their own functioning IP.

Hardly anyone who actually buys an iPhone thinks the cost of the network technologies and implementation provided by Qualcomm is "painful" next to hundreds in margins that Apple charges for things like an extra 256GB of upgraded storage. Many did notice the inferior connectivity of the Intel equipped iPhone 11...

No, they do think it’s painful. They just don’t know what all is causing the pain. Qualcomm plays a heavy role in jacking up the price of all smartphones, iPhones included. Apple’s own ambitions to snatch extra money just adds to it, it doesn’t negate it.

 

[moinmoin]

There is the issue of patents and intellectual property, but barring some bombshell lawsuit upcoming, Apple has already navigated that.

Yeah, when Apple bought Intel's modem team that did come with related patents as well. That's likely also why the lawsuits vs QC stopped right after that.

 

[Raqia]

I don’t think it will continue to be challenging. At least not moreso than Qualcomm and the other players. Any company or individual can enter any field if they can hire the people who know how to do it. Apple did that.

If McDonald’s hired 1500 cellular engineers and managers each from Qualcomm, Apple, Mediatek, and Huawei with half of them having at least a decade of experience designing, validating, and troubleshooting cellular modems, plus you paid them for 5 to 8 years and fully financed their work and the support structure they need, McDonald’s could be selling Happy Modems for use in 2033 connected devices.

There is the issue of patents and intellectual property, but barring some bombshell lawsuit upcoming, Apple has already navigated that. Now they just have to iterate and advance on their own functioning IP.

No, they do think it’s painful. They just don’t know what all is causing the pain. Qualcomm plays a heavy role in jacking up the price of all smartphones, iPhones included. Apple’s own ambitions to snatch extra money just adds to it, it doesn’t negate it.

And the board would fire the CEO of McDonald's for incompetence when he should have been focused on burgers, restaurant location and advertising. Cook has been enough of a rain-maker at Apple for their car and modem project to not matter for his tenure there.

Customers have no reason to think it's painful except for Apple's deeply misrepresenting smear-campaign during its attempt to throw its weight around against another supplier it wanted to slurp the IP out of (cf. Dialog, GTAT, Imagination etc.). The legal opinion which involves much discovery and many perceptive eyes on the topic affirms this:

Qualcomm Wins Chip Antitrust Case Again as 9th Cir. Affirms (1)

Chip maker Qualcomm Inc. prevailed Tuesday in an antitrust case alleging its business practices violate California’s antitrust laws, after the Ninth Circuit largely affirmed a lower district court’s judgments against consumer plaintiffs.

news.bloomberglaw.com

 

[poke01]

[

And the board would fire the CEO of McDonald's for incompetence when he should have been focused on burgers, restaurant location and advertising. Cook has been enough of a rain-maker at Apple for their car and modem project to not matter for his tenure there.

Customers have no reason to think it's painful except for Apple's deeply misrepresenting smear-campaign during its attempt to throw its weight around against another supplier it wanted to slurp the IP out of (cf. Dialog, GTAT, Imagination etc.). The legal opinion which involves much discovery and many perceptive eyes on the topic affirms this:

Qualcomm Wins Chip Antitrust Case Again as 9th Cir. Affirms (1)

Chip maker Qualcomm Inc. prevailed Tuesday in an antitrust case alleging its business practices violate California’s antitrust laws, after the Ninth Circuit largely affirmed a lower district court’s judgments against consumer plaintiffs.

news.bloomberglaw.com

Again this is just corporate BS, Intel did and NV do far worse things. The average Apple customer doesn’t care.

You are acting like Qualcomm is a saint and is a beacon of freedom and equality. Tell me what did Qualcomm do that was innovative over the last decade.

 

[The Hardcard]

And the board would fire the CEO of McDonald's for incompetence when he should have been focused on burgers, restaurant location and advertising. Cook has been enough of a rain-maker at Apple for their car and modem project to not matter for his tenure there.

Customers have no reason to think it's painful except for Apple's deeply misrepresenting smear-campaign during its attempt to throw its weight around against another supplier it wanted to slurp the IP out of (cf. Dialog, GTAT, Imagination etc.). The legal opinion which involves much discovery and many perceptive eyes on the topic affirms this:

Qualcomm Wins Chip Antitrust Case Again as 9th Cir. Affirms (1)

Chip maker Qualcomm Inc. prevailed Tuesday in an antitrust case alleging its business practices violate California’s antitrust laws, after the Ninth Circuit largely affirmed a lower district court’s judgments against consumer plaintiffs.

news.bloomberglaw.com

Corporate boards care about money and money only and they don’t care where it comes from. Thousands of corporations in the US alone own companies that have nothing to do with their core business. As long as the money comes in everybody’s happy.

But of course that’s all besides the point which your response chooses to dodge. The point is the Apple is not going to have any problems building cellular modems above that of other companies building them. They did what is necessary, hiring a sufficient team of people who know how to build cellular modems and have extensive experience doing so.

Qualcomm winning an antitrust suit doesn’t mean that they’re not double dipping. Remember, United States is a country that allows tremendous amounts of corporate malfeasance before they even think about stepping in to stop it. Qualcomm’s practices are a problem for the smartphone industry, but Apple will soon be free of them.

 

[mvprod123]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1895918928771305828

 

[poke01]

Some info regarding dynamic caching

 

[Raqia]

Corporate boards care about money and money only and they don’t care where it comes from. Thousands of corporations in the US alone own companies that have nothing to do with their core business. As long as the money comes in everybody’s happy.

But of course that’s all besides the point which your response chooses to dodge. The point is the Apple is not going to have any problems building cellular modems above that of other companies building them. They did what is necessary, hiring a sufficient team of people who know how to build cellular modems and have extensive experience doing so.

Qualcomm winning an antitrust suit doesn’t mean that they’re not double dipping. Remember, United States is a country that allows tremendous amounts of corporate malfeasance before they even think about stepping in to stop it. Qualcomm’s practices are a problem for the smartphone industry, but Apple will soon be free of them.

I approach the subject without the assumption that Apple is right by default. (... and yes, Qualcomm also abuses its customers to the full extent possible so long as their lawyers can win in the end.)

Two things Apple perpetuated during its big spat with Qualcomm:

1) "Qualcomm double dips by charging for modem and licensing": The modem is an accelerator for a cellular standard whose physical and software implementation incurs separate costs from the IP that runs on top of it. Just like there are separate costs to the consumer when buying a game for licensing a particular game engine that are apart from the cost of paying for the GPU and computer implementation that it runs on, there are separate costs for licensing a particular cellular standard from the modem and RF that implement it. There are indeed cellular standards that run on Qualcomm client implementations that it did not invent such as GSM. The standards are also practiced outside the phone itself in cell towers and the associated network infrastructure.

2) "Qualcomm charges a proportion of the value of a phone when licensing and this is not fair": The royalty is actually capped at the first $400 of the value of a phone. It is much more accurate to think of the licensing fee as a fixed fee with a sliding discount for phone implementations that have a wholesale value lower than $400. This is much more fair to most cellular industry ecosystem players, and of course the manufacturer of the most expensive phones would want to cry foul and distort the nature of the licensing to suit its position.

I am not saying that the above is the only interpretation possible, just that Apple's publicly stated interpretations are generally accepted without question or understanding of the nature of the standards vs. the implementation.

 

[Doug S]

I approach the subject without the assumption that Apple is right by default. (... and yes, Qualcomm also abuses its customers to the full extent possible so long as their lawyers can win in the end.)

Two things Apple perpetuated during its big spat with Qualcomm:

1) "Qualcomm double dips by charging for modem and licensing": The modem is an accelerator for a cellular standard whose physical and software implementation incurs separate costs from the IP that runs on top of it. Just like there are separate costs to the consumer when buying a game for licensing a particular game engine that are apart from the cost of paying for the GPU and computer implementation that it runs on, there are separate costs for licensing a particular cellular standard from the modem and RF that implement it. There are indeed cellular standards that run on Qualcomm client implementations that it did not invent such as GSM. The standards are also practiced outside the phone itself in cell towers and the associated network infrastructure.

2) "Qualcomm charges a proportion of the value of a phone when licensing and this is not fair": The royalty is actually capped at the first $400 of the value of a phone. It is much more accurate to think of the licensing fee as a fixed fee with a sliding discount for phone implementations that have a wholesale value lower than $400. This is much more fair to most cellular industry ecosystem players, and of course the manufacturer of the most expensive phones would want to cry foul and distort the nature of the licensing to suit its position.

I am not saying that the above is the only interpretation possible, just that Apple's publicly stated interpretations are generally accepted without question or understanding of the nature of the standards vs. the implementation.

The double dip isn't "charging for the modem hardware and then charging for the patents", it is forcing buyers of the chips to license a bunch of other non-FRAND Qualcomm patents (even if you have no use for them) that was one of their big complaints. Basically pumping up their IP licensing revenue by including a bunch of junk patents.

And charging based on price of the device it goes in is ridiculous, whether or not it is capped at $400. There are Android smartphones being sold in third world countries for under $30 that will pay less a tenth of the royalties that one selling for $401 does. If both devices make calls, send/receive data and so forth using the same patents, how is it justified that Qualcomm gets 10x the revenue from the latter device. They had ZERO to do with why it costs $401 - it costs that much because it has a better display, better processor, better camera, more memory and so forth, and none of that makes its cellular patents more valuable. If I owned a patent on say rack and pinion steering why should I get paid 100x more when that patent was used in a million dollar hypercar versus some $10K econobox sold in India? Or 10x if I was "generous" like Qualcomm and capped the price at $100K lol

People have plenty of understanding about this, you just don't like that we believe that Qualcomm's position is a bunch of bs. Apple is hardly the only company who has a problem with them, they've just been one of the few able to speak up - every other major smartphone OEM is dependent on them not just for a modem but for their entire SoC in at least part of their product portfolio, so they can't risk calling them out.

 

[Mopetar]

Apple is taking on this complex, non-core competence project where it ultimately doesn't have superior efficiency or differentiation.

Once upon a time I'm sure someone said the same about them making their own phones, and later their own SoC, and later still their own CPU cores.

Apple's entry into modems is more than competent enough. Perhaps in time it will even become core to the company like those other things that they had never done before and now do better than everyone else.

 

[Raqia]

The double dip isn't "charging for the modem hardware and then charging for the patents", it is forcing buyers of the chips to license a bunch of other non-FRAND Qualcomm patents (even if you have no use for them) that was one of their big complaints. Basically pumping up their IP licensing revenue by including a bunch of junk patents.

And charging based on price of the device it goes in is ridiculous, whether or not it is capped at $400. There are Android smartphones being sold in third world countries for under $30 that will pay less a tenth of the royalties that one selling for $401 does. If both devices make calls, send/receive data and so forth using the same patents, how is it justified that Qualcomm gets 10x the revenue from the latter device. They had ZERO to do with why it costs $401 - it costs that much because it has a better display, better processor, better camera, more memory and so forth, and none of that makes its cellular patents more valuable. If I owned a patent on say rack and pinion steering why should I get paid 100x more when that patent was used in a million dollar hypercar versus some $10K econobox sold in India? Or 10x if I was "generous" like Qualcomm and capped the price at $100K lol

People have plenty of understanding about this, you just don't like that we believe that Qualcomm's position is a bunch of bs. Apple is hardly the only company who has a problem with them, they've just been one of the few able to speak up - every other major smartphone OEM is dependent on them not just for a modem but for their entire SoC in at least part of their product portfolio, so they can't risk calling them out.

The goal posts have been shifted here from how Apple presented the issue in your response. The non-FRAND patents are quite important for efficient implementations that don't burn a hole in your pocket and don't take a perceptibly long time to reconnect, hand off etc all w/o the device acting as a jammer and draining your battery in a few minutes. Qualcomm is free to charge what the market will bear for these patents as they are not FRAND. If Apple does create its own implementations, it may reduce their reliance on some of these non-FRAND patents, but even in the case of Huawei which both contributed to the standards and the non-FRAND implementation patents, after cross-licensing discussions the net payments are substantially positive toward Qualcomm.

Devices that cost less than $400 will have lower resolutions screens and lesser SoCs which software services do detect and adjust for when delivering content. These devices could have made do with a lesser standard, but still benefit from the unified standard and the headroom provided by it. I think it's perfectly reasonable provide a discount in these cases.

Most of the pro-Apple arguments ignore the value provided by and complexity of both developing these standards and their implementations. They assume some wrong doing and abuse on the part of Qualcomm against poor Apple but the point of view is deeply distorted and ignores the broader ecosystem along with the proper husbandry of scarce spectrum resources. Given Apple's history of supplier abuse, a much more consistent point of view would see it as just a bean-counter driven attempt to deprive early investors and inventors of the tail value of inventions.

 

[Raqia]

Once upon a time I'm sure someone said the same about them making their own phones, and later their own SoC, and later still their own CPU cores.

Apple's entry into modems is more than competent enough. Perhaps in time it will even become core to the company like those other things that they had never done before and now do better than everyone else.

Apple's SoC developments occurred along side a clean sheet reinvention of OSX and a new 64-bit ISA designed for performance. They created something new and differentiated and ran with that: its silicon efforts were a tail wind during the 2010's.

Cellular is anything but a clean sheet reinvention with loads of messy real world compatibility issues and multiple IP incumbents to deal with (I could easily see Huawei suing in China after patent talks to block CX equipped Apple devices if Apple insists on being recalcitrant...). I think it will prove a complex and distracting challenge for years: it is a weight at its ankles.

 

[mvprod123]

M4 MacBook Air

https://twitter.com/x/status/1896589954517701057

 

[Eug]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1896589954517701057

@mvprod123 beat me to it. Anyhow, I think I might wait until the summer to buy a MBA, to get a further ~15% discount off the already discounted edu price.

 

[oak8292]

Apple's SoC developments occurred along side a clean sheet reinvention of OSX and a new 64-bit ISA designed for performance. They created something new and differentiated and ran with that and its silicon efforts were a tail wind during the 2010's.

Cellular is anything but a clean sheet reinvention with loads of messy real world compatibility issues and multiple IP incumbents to deal with (I could easily see Huawei suing in China after patent talks to block CX equipped Apple devices if Apple insists on being recalcitrant...). I think it will prove a complex and distracting challenge for years: it is a weight at its ankles.

Cellular was a real mess prior to the ‘clean’ up by iOS and Android. Every carrier had their own version of a phone and the user was dependent on them for updates. If it wasn’t a popular phone you might never get an update. Apple controlling the OS and then Google taking over Android cleaned up that mess. I can buy an unlocked phone and put it on any carrier.

Now if Apple and Google can get carriers to coordinate more it may aid in simplifying the cellular mess. Qualcomm has a vested interest in keeping their IP in the mix and that could be a complicating factor. Apple and Google have some cellular IP from Infineon and Motorola but I doubt they want to complicate connectivity. Google makes money on ads, Apple makes money on hardware and services and neither make money on cellular IP. In ten years the baseband chip may be relatively simple and work globally.