News Apple reveals the labs that produced the Apple Silicon line of custom CPUs

[Admin]

Apple's Silicon Valley HQ chip labs get a visit from roving CNBC Business News reporters, with M3 chips being seen under test.

Apple reveals the labs that produced the Apple Silicon line of custom CPUs : Read more

 

[bit_user]

For those who don't know, Jim Keller worked on the Apple A4 and A5 SoC's before returning to AMD to head up their Zen effort.

I believe Apple got most of its initial semiconductor engineering team from its acquisition of P.A. Semi, which included industry veterans including lead architect of DEC's Alpha 21064. Other staff had worked on Sun UltraSPARC, AMD Opteron, and Itanium.

 

[leoneo.x64]

For those who don't know, Jim Keller worked on the Apple A4 and A5 SoC's before returning to AMD to head up their Zen effort.

I believe Apple got most of its initial semiconductor engineering team from its acquisition of P.A. Semi, which included industry veterans including lead architect of DEC's Alpha 21064. Other staff had worked on Sun UltraSPARC, AMD Opteron, and Itanium.

Thank you very much, for the info.

Now if only Apple can be convinced to make an "exotic" console and associated exclusive games. I miss the PS3 era, where news articles came out every month about SPU utilisation and the wonders it worked for exclusives. The new gen where PC architecture is the common denominator for consoles is healthy, but I must admit, a bit less thrilling too

 

[bit_user]

Thank you very much, for the info.

Mostly cribbed from Wikipedia, but I figured it was better to lift a few key facts than paste links most people wouldn't follow.

I miss the PS3 era, where news articles came out every month about SPU utilisation and the wonders it worked for exclusives.

The PS3 was a near disaster, due to the difficulty in programming it. XBox 360 wasn't too much better.

That's probably why, in the next generation, both Sony and MS went for a PC-like CPU that developers were more comfortable and familiar with programming and optimizing for. The benefit is that developers don't have a huge learning curve like on the PS3, but the downside is that you don't get that same kind of progressive improvement that made the late-era PS3 games almost seem like you're playing on a different console than the early titles.

The new gen where PC architecture is the common denominator for consoles is healthy, but I must admit, a bit less thrilling too

The only real learning curve is probably on the GPU - things like ray tracing, mesh/primitive shaders, and perhaps AI.

 

[ivan_vy]

Now if only Apple can be convinced to make an "exotic" console and associated exclusive games. I miss the PS3 era,

I would prefer to not, game preservation has been very hard for the PS3 architecture, emulation has been rough with many hit & miss, even Sony had to used cell chips for its PS Now service.

Sony's PlayStation Now uses custom-designed hardware with eight PS3s on a single motherboard

Sony is developing new PS3 server hardware with eight consoles per board to combat lag and space limitations.

www.extremetech.com