Gerard Williams III, the lead designer of Apple's industry-leading custom A-series ARM-based chips has left the company according to a CNET report. The departure couldn't have come at a worse time for Apple which has been reeling from negative publicity surrounding the termination of the high-profile AirPower charging mat device and an admission that its third-generation butterfly-mechanism based keyboards are also susceptible to failing.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/In-yet-another-blow-Apple-loses-its-lead-A-series-chip-engineer.415351.0.html
But who will make up the cool names like a14 bionic commando?
IMO, what feels likely is Apple is no longer allowing the near unlimited SoC funding and focus on SoC performance anymore.
The A7 genuinely shocked the tech world. Not only was it the first consumer ARM v8 ISA core, it was extremely fast, and it had a custom architecture. Ever since then, Apple has held an unprecedented lead in ARM CPU IPC (and performance, especially low threaded work).
However, with other companies tying to squeeze in on Apple, the ever rising cost of Apple phones, and the backlash against the pricing, the Apple era of unlimited allowance for their SoC may have already come to an end.
In that light, it makes sense why their lead SoC engineer is no longer working at Apple. The price/perf market for ARM SoC design says to just license a high end Cortex, like Qualcomm has finally resorted to (and to a lessor extent, Nvidia). Qualcomm use to have custom ARM CPU designs. Nowadays, they just license the Cortex IP and customize it. Nvidia still insists on their own CPU design, but they also use a lot of Cortex designs throughout their SoC designs (particularly the Cortex-R series).
Quote from: jeremy on March 31, 2019, 20:30:54
IMO, what feels likely is Apple is no longer allowing the near unlimited SoC funding and focus on SoC performance anymore.
The A7 genuinely shocked the tech world. Not only was it the first consumer ARM v8 ISA core, it was extremely fast, and it had a custom architecture. Ever since then, Apple has held an unprecedented lead in ARM CPU IPC (and performance, especially low threaded work).
However, with other companies tying to squeeze in on Apple, the ever rising cost of Apple phones, and the backlash against the pricing, the Apple era of unlimited allowance for their SoC may have already come to an end.
In that light, it makes sense why their lead SoC engineer is no longer working at Apple. The price/perf market for ARM SoC design says to just license a high end Cortex, like Qualcomm has finally resorted to (and to a lessor extent, Nvidia). Qualcomm use to have custom ARM CPU designs. Nowadays, they just license the Cortex IP and customize it. Nvidia still insists on their own CPU design, but they also use a lot of Cortex designs throughout their SoC designs (particularly the Cortex-R series).
That's a good point.
Sad indeed.