Bahoot? Kersplat!

I suppose the folks that live in low lying area care about the sea level rise, but the food production is certainly a global issue, and the potential for "who knows what" is clearly NOT going to work -- funny thing too is in today's local paper the "rebound" in the levels of the Great Lakes is seen as a positive: http://www.bnd.com/326/story/1066820.html

Personally I like a BIG beach and shallow wading area, and I am not at all sure that the fluctuation of the Great Lakes are tied to trends in "climate change" so much as water usage and local weather http://www.lre.usace.army.mil/greatlakes/hh/greatlakeswaterlevels/historicdata/greatlakeshydrographs/

Anyhow seems that getting the industries that can benefit from a forced technology change to support things is the way to go. http://www.gepower.com/about/index.htm



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2009 02:09PM by stan adams.

aw shit, aw fuck, aw damn. the end of the macbook pro... ?

http://gizmodo.com/5436465/the-mystery-of-the-next-macbook-guts

Powerbook G5s?

Taking reply to the parlour.

Baha, that's pointing more at trouble with the Macbook standard. Pros can and will continue to have discrete GPUs. The trouble between Intel and Nvidia (here's why Intel needs an antitrust smacking) is in chipsets, where Nvidia was putting good GPUs for low end machines. Nevertheless, I'm finally ready for an MBP and picked a bad time to need one. Hopefully we'll get clarity next month.

The Quad Core iMac is an entirely different beast from the laptop. It's much, much more responsive. Fantastic to see Parallels running full speed and now stickedly-stall.

Bahamut, it looks to me as though this is a problem for every maker of computing hardware, not just Apple. What are Sony and HP going to do about this? I'd say that Intel is finally skating out onto thin ice. It never pays to annoy all of your major customers at the same time. AAPL is cash rich and might elect to set up their own chip fab.

Quote
Noharness
Bahamut, it looks to me as though this is a problem for every maker of computing hardware, not just Apple. What are Sony and HP going to do about this? I'd say that Intel is finally skating out onto thin ice. It never pays to annoy all of your major customers at the same time. AAPL is cash rich and might elect to set up their own chip fab.

Oh NO, not PowerPC Part Deux, "Back from the Dead and more powerful than ever, the humming Cell processor that makes console gamers quiver will be Apple's weapon of choice in slashing at the heart of the biggest bully in Silicon Valley..."

But seriously, the "problem" of having an OS / user experience that is tied to a specific level of graphics is not unique to Apple these days, it is just that the other manufactures won't get beat up as bad if they deliver "new" laptops with crappier graphics than current, as they can generally say "well the systems that we currently produce reflect the less graphics intensive needs of the users shopping at this price point" (or some other goobly gook...) where as Apple has pretty much set a "minimum" that Intel may not be super happy to meet AND still fulfill their desire to trounce folks that tangentially compete with them (like NVidia and ATI...)

I do think that Apple could technically afford to do some inhouse engineering, but actual fab? In this age of ever shrinking returns on cutting edge microprocessor facilities that would be a recipe for burning the cash horde with a flash fire... Somehow I doubt that the boyz from gizmodo know more about this problem than Apple. Solutions are probably in place to bully Intel into getting what Apple needs OR have a plan B that will not cause guffaws from the blog o sphere...

doesn't apple already do inhouse engineering? thought they designed the northbridge and other controller chips and the fabbed them out.

ddt

They do. That was point -- the gizmodo boys live in "retail world". The Apple engineers live in the real world of long lead times. Just because you are not going to be able to go to Fry's (or the OEM equivalent, as there really is no such think as a "home brew" laptop in the same sense as there are desktop to assemble one self) and buy a set of boxed up chips that will incorporate the things that Apple will need to use the "latest and greatest" CPU and have sufficiently powerful graphics does not mean that the Apple engineers have no solution. Given Apple's legendary secrecy about things far less central to the success of their biggest margin devices I sincerely doubt that those engineers will spill the beans about what sorts of solutions they have from Intel or Nvidia or ATI until the pipeline is MUCH closer to shipping and Apple's wannabe competitors are far off the schedule.

SJ has been hitting the targets of "great technology" and "great timeline" better than pretty much any other laptop firm for quite some time. That is no accident.


(and to be extra clear I assumed Don was using the term "set up a fab" in the strictest sense -- investing a dedicated production facility that would craft custom CPUs. I believe it is correct they they already have some relationships with custom contract chip fabrication, but it is also clear that Apple makes decisions about "who gets the business" is ways that are different from many other companies: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/10/17/inside_the_new_macbooks_firewire_usb_and_the_nvidia_controller.html )



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2009 07:32AM by stan adams.

JollysFastVNC has finally hit 1.0 status... and along with that version bump, it goes from Freeware to a $40 paid app. No, thank you. I'm all for paying for software but that's not a reasonable price.

Intel had better fix this problem or else we'll go to... hmmm... no-one.

What about ATI?

Didn't apple buy some fab capacity a while back? I forget.

Designers / IP, but no fab: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9926461-37.html Nice to have access to technology that gives Intel and AMD fits...

Makes no sense at all to be in the business of cutting silicon these days -- Chinese are dangling huge incentives to the chip fabricators in an attempt to get more of the skills that the Koreans and Intel have to scale even older technology to truly massive levels. Very destabilizing to the whole pricing model that exists not just for CPU/GPU work, but even memory and less cutting edge ICs. Could really see margins for the guys that make all kinds of chips fall off a cliff. The fact is the single most expensive item in basically every laptop / desktop / smartphone is currently the CPU...

oh never mind.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/04/2010 12:50PM by bahamut.

Stan,

I cannot think of any other reason why AAPL spent $287 million for Palo Alto Semiconductor. Especially when you stop and think about what they are doing with iPod and iPhone. Don Trabajos dislikes being at the mercy of anyone and is a control freak. Having a hand in the production of the CPU's his computers are built around just makes sense.

Now, do I believe that Don Trabajos had this in mind when he acquired PA Semi? No, but I do believe that he was anticipating exactly what is going on between Intel and Nvidia right now or a situation so similar to it as to be indistinguishable. PA Semi is a chess piece acquired to keep the good Captain Shaw and her hearties at Intel in line with Don Trabajos's wants and desires. Even the biggest stick is of no use if you do not really intend to use it.

I think that Don Trabajos understands this principle. I also think that the good Captain Shaw and her hearties at Intel are annoyed with Nvidia for poaching one of their best new customers--Apple. This is an easily recognizable pecker measuring contest to see who will rule the roost. I am betting on Don Trabajos. He is not a man who is easily intimidated.

It is rumored, as it has been for nearly fourteen years now that Apple will come out with something new, possibly a tablet type computer. I believe that this device will be more like the iPhone than anyone currently expects. Why? Because you can only fit so much computing power into that size of box. Any such device is going to need to connect with a network of rather more substantial computing power. Tri-corder anyone?

DPBD!

Honesty demands that I post this link. I have been thinking the same thing for a while now.

http://4thscreen.blogspot.com/2009/05/does-pa-semi-make-sense-now.html

I see lots of problems in that blog post, mostly about how profitable netbooks can ever really be to a company that has made an handsome profit margin selling HW that is thisclose to HW that is much less costly -- yes I know that pretty much OSx86 hackintosh builder / advocate says they are NOT doing it to save money, but to "get a machine that Apple does not make" but the fact is that Apple gets a healthy upcharge for the machines it chooses to make. If it was just about some mythical "cut out the big profits of Intel" angle I would still say "baloney".

What does make sense though is to have IN HOUSE a team that is CAPABLE of out lining an alternate strategy. The kind of "hey, sit down with our guys, listen to their presentation, see if this is something you can do, if you can't (for your own internal strategic reasons...) then realize that we will be giving the same presentation to TI, or Samsung or whoever else has no qualms about fabricating some silicon for us that will end up seeing them 'advance' with us while you stay back to fight your 'battle' with AMD/Nvidia..." talk has PROBABLY ALREADY HAPPENED. Intel almost certainly has designed they'll either get on that bandwagon OR keep quiet about not doing so as they make some nice coin from Apple's other business.

And finally, I can't tell if I made my arguement clear in the above posts, but the fact is that right now CONTRACT fabricators are still not capable of reproducing the same level of technology that Intel is capable of -- their techniques are just too expensive (1) and even should some one like the Chinese pseudo venture capitalists be ready to pour the kind of dough needed to scale up fabs the result would be at best still a half generation behind the whole package of lithography / dieletrics / yield that Intel is producing right now becuase the rest of the world knows that basically everybody else is an "also ran" in that race: http://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/200601/06-0112E/

1 -- the reason that Intel can support their "too expensive" techniques is becuase of the succes of their marketing campaigns on both the direct consumer level and also the technical marketing techniques. Buyers of laptops and desktops pay a premium for "Intel Inside" and that premium is funneled back to keep the Intel ecosystem healthy. Intel does spend more on R&D in all areas than any competitor, and that results in higher performance compliers, more flexible / energy saving peripheral chips, and basically a juggernaut that cannot be outflanked.

Which still makes me ask two things:

1) If they spend so much more on R&D than the rest and are so far ahead of the curve - why do their "integrated graphics" suck so badly?

and

2) Given said suckage, why intentionally piss off nVidia (and possibly ATI) as well as all their major customers by making a whiz-bang new chip with crippled graphics?

It's a lose-lose for everyone.

well, not that I have first-hand knowledge, tony, but my informed guesses (given real background knowledge) are:

1a) intel really pushes "package" deals. that is, they make it a lot more expensive to buy just the CPU w/o the integrated gfx chip, in the hopes of getting traction in the gfx market against entrenched powers nvidia and AMD/ATI. remember, every penny apple saves on parts translates to something like a dollar saved on retail price of the final product.
1b) apple wants to hold on to the market for the macbook pro... .

wait, I was answering as though the "they" you ask about was apple, not intel. sorry. if you're asking why intel's integrated gfx sucks so badly well, it is new to them and they don't want to license from the other companies the technical solutions to common problems, for one thing... .

ddt