[Info-vax] OT: About proprietary chips

[John Wallace]

On Jan 28, 4:59 pm, Paul Sture <paul.nos... at sture.ch> wrote:
> In article <3aTfNxb2i... at eisner.encompasserve.org>,
>  koeh... at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) wrote:
>
> > In article <000fa71b$0$2269$c3e8... at news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei
> > <jfmezei.spam... at vaxination.ca> writes:
>
> > > 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.
>
> >    So where can we get specs and architecture descriptions of this new
> >    chip?
>
> Everyone interested in hardware is asking that question today :-)
>
> --
> Paul Sture

Everybody may be asking but a quick look around just now reveals
mostly smoke and heat but very little illumination.

One thing that I did spot, which almost makes this topic relevant to
comp.os.vms (and would make it relevant to comp.sys.dec) is that when
Apple bought PA Semiconductor, they bought the services of a chap
called Dobberpuhl. That's the same Dan Dobberpuhl named on the Alpha
Architecture Reference Manual, the same one that led Digital
Semiconductor's StrongARM team, etc (and back in the dim and distant
past, Mr Dobberpuhl also brought the world the PDP11-on-a-chip, the
T11 chip, as used on the KXT11/Falcon).

The word seems to be that Apple's so-called A4 is actually based
around an ARM A9 core, whose generic specs should be readily available
from ARM and specific implementation details from existing ARM
licensees. It gets a lot less clearer with things like the graphics
controller in the chip (yes, that's what SystemOnChip means - in this
case, CPU, GPU, memory controller, and as much other stuff as possible
all on one chip). ARM have graphics designs which should be relatively
easy to integrate with an ARM CPU; others also claim to have low
wattage GPU designs (which may be less easy to integrate but may be
better for some kinds of graphics). I haven't yet seen anything
definitive re graphics.