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Opinion: What to expect from Apple’s A9 chip

A9

Less than a month from now, Apple is expected to officially unveil its new A9 chip. This will be the ninth A-Series processor including the original A4, which powered the first iPad, iPhone 4, fourth-generation iPod touch, and second-generation Apple TV. It’s hard to overstate the importance of the A-series chips to Apple’s devices, as they’ve helped the company to achieve everything from major processing leaps to impressive power efficiency and — often taken for granted — guaranteed UI smoothness for every year’s newly-launched devices.

With the iPhone 6S just around the corner, we’ve started to receive tips purporting to reveal how much better the A9 will perform than the A8 processors found in the latest iPhones, iPad Air 2, and iPod touch. While we wouldn’t characterize the numbers we’ve seen as reliable, they led us to look back at the history of A-series chips, and consider what can reasonably be expected from the A9. Read on for our thoughts…


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Intel CEO says relationship with Apple strong amid rumors of Apple-designed Mac processors

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Apple Intel

As we reported earlier this week, often reliable KGI is predicting that Apple will bring its in-house designed A-series processor to an entry-level Mac sometime in 2016 with TSMC and Samsung expected to fab the potential A9X and A10X chips, respectively. As the move to put non-Intel chips in the Mac lineup would be a departure for the company, CNBC asked Intel CEO Brian Krzanich about the chip-maker’s business plans with Apple…
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Intel launches updated Haswell chips, likely to appear in upcoming MacBook Pro spec bump

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Screen Shot 2014-07-21 at 6.40.05 PM

Intel has debuted the next generation of its Core i5 and i7 processors, according to a report from CPU World. Each of these updated chips sports a 200 MHz speed boost over its previous incarnation, which can currently be found in the MacBook Pro lineup. It’s likely that these processors will be found in a spec-bumped version of the MacBook Pro later this year.

The current series of MacBook Pro processors are available at clock speeds of 2.0 GHz (in the lowest-end 13-inch model) up to 2.6 GHz (in the top-of-the-line, built-to-order 15-inch model). The next-gen models released this week range from 2.2 to 3.0 GHz, which will provide a decent speed boost to each model.


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Job postings suggest Apple to begin chip development in Orlando, Florida, near chip partners AMD and Qualcomm

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Several job postings looking for both hardware and software engineers reveal that Apple is looking to begin its own chip development in Orlando, Florida.

Last week we learned that Apple is hiring software engineers to work on fingerprint technology at Authentec in Melbourne, Florida, which is about one hour south of the future site of the company’s development labs.

The job posting are interesting as Samsung, which works with Apple to develop the custom chips used in iPhones and iPads, continues to compete with Apple in the smartphone and tablet space.


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Report: Samsung will not increase price of A-series processors

Update: Another report disputes these claims.

South Korean newspaper Chosun.com on Monday reported that Samsung would raise the price of its A-series processors on Apple by 20 percent, but a new report attempts to debunk that claim.

An unnamed Samsung Electronics official allegedly denied to Seoul-based newspaper The Hankyoreh (via TheStreet) that prices would increase, and he further explained prices are “set at the beginning of the year and aren’t changed easily.”

Apple and Samsung have a relationship that is extremely contentious as of late, especially since Apple victoriously sued Samsung in August, but CEO Tim Cook told investors during a Q4 2012 earnings call that Apple continues to be a “customer of Samsung and continue[s] to have a commercial relationship.”

Get the full report at TheStreet.


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