[Info-vax] OT: About proprietary chips

[JF Mezei]

Interesting development today. Apple unveiled its new Ipad (no, it isn't
a feminine hygiene product :-).

Yeah, there has been a lot of hype and speculation about it (Apple knows
what buttons to push to automatically create such free advertising).

What is interesting is that Apple, not so long ago, purchased a small
semiconductor firm. And this new product incorporates an Apple designed
chip as it main CPU.

So, on the one hand, Apple went to industry standard for its computers
(the 8086). But for its handheld products, it is now moving to a
proprietary chip. Probably because it feels it has high enough volume to
cost justify it and might give it an edge over the other "iphone
wannabes" who will be using off the shelf chips.

Not sure if this chip uses the ARM instruction set or not.

Alpha failed because it didn't reach sufficient numbers. IA64 certaintly
hasn't become commodity and/or high volume. Will be interesting to see
if Apple will be able to get large enough numbers to make its A4 chip
viable.