Analysis on Mobile Processor: Who will be the winner

The focus of this blog is to analyze the companies competing in the mobile processing market which company will be the dominant force and why.
The 2 main companies which we are trying to analyze here are Intel Inc, USA and ARM Plc, UK. 
Intel's focus has always been performance.The other great thing about Intel is that it stands on to the challenge. Intel after trying to stabilize its monopoly in the high end processor market is trying to focus on the mobile processing. This is an area where it sees a lot of potential.  
The concern for Intel is ARM's strength in low-power consumption and the ARM’s ambitions to enter the net book market. The average consumer drives processing power to meet lifestyle, computing needs is now available on mobile phones and other mobile Internet devices such as net books. 

ARM Plc is a Cambridge, UK based firm its focus from the start has always been making products which consumes less power and this is what it has been doing for quite some time.
Year 2009, Intel has shift its competitive focus from AMD and gearing onto a new but comparatively smaller competitor i.e. ARM. ARM's entry into the net book market which is dominated by Intel/ Is it Intel's entry into mobile processing business that has dominated by ARM.
It's not about who is the culprit, the question is who will thrive and come out victorious.
 

At the heart of all smart phone is a powerful application processor. The processing power of this part rivals the CPU power that was available on mainstream computers only a few years ago. Today, ARM enjoys a 98% share of the application processor slots in smart phones. In addition, a variety of communication, connectivity chips from ARM ecosystem partners are the driving force behind the versatility of smart phones.

The strong points which lie in favor of ARM are
a) ARM has applied the philosophy "United we stand, Divided we fall". We can clearly observe this with its strong ARM community with ARM helping various companies develop new products and trying to win new market's and make new application using ARM's low power processors. ARM is trying to build an ecosystem with the help of its partners. It is a symbiotic relationship that exists only due to the fact that ARM product's at the moment are well suited for the mobile industry due to its performance, power and area. 

b) The Semiconductor Industry on the other hand wants to break Intel's monopoly. The whole industry is betting on ARM. Its better to work with ARM and it's community than to have fierce competition with Intel. This can be seem with Samsung adopting Mali Graphic processors architecture from ARM Plc for its future graphics-enabled system-on-chip (SoC) ICs as well as for its ASIC and foundry business. In the past Samsung has used the PowerVR range of graphics processor cores, which it licensed from Imagination Technologies Group plc (UK), with success in such applications as the Apple iPhone. The close coupling of both the mobile computing and the graphics processor technologies will provide optimized system performance

c) Majority of the companies which build platforms for the cellphone market are already been making use of ARM in its processor. ARM has already proven itself in the cellular business with it's low power processors. Secondly ARM's competitors have failed to produce reliable processors which could disturbe ARM's monopoly in the market. 

d) ARM's business model involves designing and licensing on IP rather than manufacturing and selling of actual semiconductor chips. ARM IP design to create and manufacture system on chip designs, paying ARM a license fee for the original IP and a royalty on every chip or wafer produced. ARM business model is more flexible to develop platforms. IP licensing is also benefiting ARM at the present. 

e) ARM has also been seen co-operating with Global Foundaries to tackle Intel's dominance in mobile computing by delivering ARM chips performing 40% better with no increase in power.
Overall the ARM-Globalfoundries deal is aimed at delivering a 40% increase in computing performance, a 30% decrease in power consumption, and a 100% increase in standby battery life at the 28nm node. ARM has established strategic relationships with other members of the IBM Joint Development Alliance to enable the development of optimised processor and physical IP tuned to the HKMG process.This phenomena is not only restricted to battle between ARM and Intel. But the war has been extended between Intel foundaries and culmination of various Foundries i.e. TSMC/ UMC/ SMC/ Global foundries.

f) AMD will also come in strong and distract Intel from it's venturing into mobile processing market as it has done in the past. 

g) Customer are being more aware of green products. Its been a global phenomena and every person in this world would like to be part of it in the future. We would like to be a part of the green planet and reduce our carbon emission. ARM products are best suited when it comes to battery life and overall reducing its carbon footprint.

Drawback for ARM and its community is that
a) Intel still is number 1 semiconductor company and that is backed by strong Research and Development and a very strong cash flow.
b) Companies like Apple would like to have competition which will help them to negotiate and keep costs in check. Apple would definitely want more competition to keep price, performance and power aspects in check.
c) Processors from MIPS has also seen to be a driving force in the smart phone market.
d) Intel due to its strong cash flow eventually has the capability to acquire ARM.

Analysis: Apple's Business and what's Inside Apple's A4

All engineers would like their design to be a part of a successful product line.
Apple products are the best for their innovative and radical approach towards design.

At the heart of the apple ipad lies a tiny Silicon which is called the brain of the device. A decision maker and a support for all innovations. Thats Apple's A4 a system-on-chip (SoC). A SoC is a combination of Graphics processing unit (GPU), a low- power CPU, memory, and other peripherals.

Apple's Macintosh used to work on Motorola/ Freescale CPU. When Motorola/ Freescale failed to deliver with a high performance CPU it turned towards IBM and then later to Intel. Apple's Macintosh has used Intel processors till now.

Today, Macs remain beholden to Intel's specifications. If Intel can't keep pace, Apple will have to find yet another vendor for CPUs. But now, with the iPad's A4, Apple has demonstrated a new option: It has the ability to take existing designs and re purpose them to give its own products better performance than the competition.

It's extremely unlikely that Apple could leverage ARM architecture for the Mac, as those processors are specifically made for low-power devices, not high-performance workstations or general computing.

With the launch of custom SoC, Apple has clearly indicated that Apple believes in control over its products in every aspect.

If you look at the battery life they're talking about, the i-pad is bigger than the iPhone but it seems like they've done a better job with battery life.

Since "almost all" existing iPhone applications will run on the iPad, it's more likely that Apple is continuing to use upgraded versions of the same graphics cores present in the iPhone, which were created from designs licensed by Imagination Technologies, based in the U.K. But Apple owns just under 10 percent of the company and all iPhone touch models use Imagination's PowerVR MBC family of graphics cores.

A highly integrated SoC like the Apple A4 would take at least 12 to 18 months to design, debug, and manufacture, however, making it unlikely that P.A. Semi (Acquired by Apple) engineers designed it from scratch.
This makes it even more likely that the A4 chip is made primarily of designs that closely match existing ARM cores. Apple would have had to move awfully fast to design its own

ARM-compatible core and the A4 SoC in so short a time. That's why I think the A4 is built on existing cores from ARM.

Another "evidence" for an Arm based processor: the name A4 may stand for Advanced Apple Arm Architecture. The final question arises what will A5 SoC stand for ?

Inside Apple A4 may have amalgamation of these
CPU - Samsung core based on ARM i.e. Cortex A9 multicore CPU for low power.
GPU- Imagination Technologies for "deferred rendering"/ ARM Mali GPU
Memory- Samsung
Wireless chips- Broadcom

Apple clearly indicates that it want's to give the best into it's products, believes in control over its products in every aspect. It also signifies it understand its users and want to build custom specific Silicon and manage costs at each level.