Nice nod to Acorn, shame the article is full of balls

The SoC in the iPhone is of Samsung's design. It's an S3C6400-series with flash and RAM in the same package. It doesn't contain anything iPhone-specific. The GSM/3G modem, touch-screen controller, and the accelerometer are all seperate off-the-shelf ICs. And the FairPlay DRM is entirely software.

Eeuw

Acorn and Apple Fanboi!

w00t

"a little bit of Acorn that refuses to die"

Die, geddit? As in semiconductor die?

Oh, never mind.

Very punny

But then where's the arm in it?

Oh, and yes, the successor of the BBC Micro had a name, dontcha know. But then even a blind pig stumbles across an Acorn now and again!

...a little bit of Acorn that refuses to die...

And the venerable 6502 of course which ARM borrows heavily from..

Where are all the Z80 fanbois now.. eh.. eh.. ?

Sorry just warped back to 1982 for a minute there

@first AC

Reading the article, it says that the CURRENT version of the iPhone has a Samsung ARM chip in it, as you say, but that it would make sense for Apple to work on their own variation of the chip for FUTURE versions of the device. Re-read it and you will see that it agrees with you.

Applw SCC

Leaving aside Apple doing "cheap" anything, a netbook-sized, touchscreen-equipped, ARM-driven device...

...wouldm't that be the long-awaited (by some of us, at least) color Newton?

I want one -- these middle-aged eyes are starting to be unhappy trying to read Palm/iPhone/Blackberry-sized screens.

Isn't (wasn't) Netbook a trademark?

Company was called Scion. Or maybe Psion. They had a few problems, decided to throw in the towel on their own OS (one which didn't need a reset button but largely "just worked", in an untrendy kind of way) and jump on the Windows Mobile bandwagon and therefore they needed to add a reset facility, and then they apparently disappeared.

@Mike Moyle

Like a Nokia 810, you mean?

Wonder if that's why ARM stock is up this week, when so much else is in the red?

/me feels smug, having bought at 90p just two months ago - on long-term expectations about a processor family with such low power consumption.

@peter hawkins

Ha! Real programmers use Ferranti FM1600E processors, programmed in FIXPAC3.

Of course, this does mean that they don't get much work done these days....

Anyone know where a '1600 can be found? Or even a manual?

Mebbe it's in me coat...

@Vincent Rice

"My own estimate for some time has been 60 million of all iPhone variants by end 2009."

I saw at least one analyst (yeah, I know) predict 45 million, so you're not alone in estimating higher than the more conservative predictions.

I hope they can sell a iPhone in Hong Kong Pre-pay - the plans aren't unreasonable, but I use a cell phone so infrequently that I can't reasonably justify it.

I'll get back to writing my game on m emulated Beeb. Mine the one with the green Acorn logo on the back, which look like an Apple in this light...

@Orlowski

Bit hipocritical posting a comment isn't it Andrew?

Anyway, back on topic, where were we, oh yes. ARM good. iPhone, not so good.

Makes sense they'd try and fab it themselves, they'll be desperate for any trickery that can give them more battery life, and not having to pay Samsung (who do a few nice touch phones now) is a bonus.

I wonder what they make of this over at iNTEL, the iPhone was surely their only route into the smartphone space with that not-so-low-power x86 effort, Atom.

@Vincent Rice

I think your '0' key is broken. The only thing iPhone will have 60 million of by the end of next year is blog postings saying how paradigm-shiftingly wonderful it is. :-/

Re: Next stop, an Apple netbook

I'd love to see Apple producing an ARM powered netbook, after all its how ARM was started as a join venture between Acorn for their new range of desktops, and Apple for use on the innovative Newton hand held. However ARM are exclusively focused on ultra low power designs for devices such as the iPhone, and to compete in the netbook world you have to have something of equivalent performance to Intel's Atom, preferably with even lower power requirements.

It would take the former PA Semi engineers producing a design with a considerable increase in performance, similar to when DEC grafted on Alpha technology create the StrongARM, with 7x the performance of any existing ARM chip. When Intel gained DECs chip business they squandered all that lead, with the years late and very unimpressive XScale family.

However I suspect the answer is more mundane and Apple are going to take an existing ARM core and make a SOC with more of the iPhone support chips on board, as speculated in the article.

@Andrew O and @AC 8:59.

I made the daft reference to Scion. It's sad, but maybe not in the way you think. I *know* it wasn't called Scion. I even know the OS isn't (quite) called Epoch. I'd hoped the comments about not needing reset buttons would identify the author as someone who had used Psions and liked them (a lot). Ho hum.

Anyway, is Netbook a trademark or not, and did Psion invent the term (and the concept, and the product) or not?

Mine's the one with the Psion 3 in one pocket and the ARM-based (but Windows-lumbered) Jornada 720 in the other, for when I catch up to the mid 1990s.

Hey, the icons have regressed! Now that's progress!

Yes, Netbook WAS (is?) a registered trademark of Psion

http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ohim?ohimnum=E428250

I'll be on to their lawyers as soon as the credit crunch is over (don't hold your breath).

Did Psion's Netbooks have a babe on the beach though? I don't remember one.