"Samsung would not give it to Apple before they used it themselves."
two mistakes in that phrase:
- A15 isn't Samsung's to give to Apple -- they license that from ARM. Yes, Samsung manufactures Apple's chips, but the chip is designed by Apple using IP licensed from ARM, Imagination Technologies and others, but as far as Samsung is concerned the chip is a black box.
- Samsung has given technology to Apple before they used it themselves several times in the past.
I also doubt the first part of your statement. It's early for an A15, but it's certainly within Apple's power to persuade ARM to help them get something they want to market early. Spending their billions to bend supplier's arms is one of the things that Apple does best.
Samsung being a conglomerate, isn't the chip division of Samsung operating independently of it's phone/electronics division? If so then I see no reason why Samsung Fab would deny a certain type of chip design to a customer like Apple.
1. Samsung are poised to be the first manufacturer to bring an A15 based SOC to market. There are no doubt many issues involved in the reality of manufacturing a new arm core, no one else is as close as Samsung. So i maintain that Apple would have needed Samsung to enable them to use an A15.
2. Yes, they have supplied apple with stuff that only they can make before using it themselves - eg. the iPad screen (but IIRC LG were meant to be supplying too), but i still don't think they would want to give apple a CPU platform that was undoubtedly better than their flagship phone so soon after releasing it.
3. ARM aren't really a supplier to apple, they just licence designs. ARM have no manufacturing expertise.
> "i still don't think they would want to give apple a CPU platform that was undoubtedly better than their flagship phone so soon after releasing it"
You need to bear in mind that the division of Samsung that sells the chips is totally separate from the division that sells the phones. The silicon division doesn't particularly care about the phone division - they care about their bottom line alone. And Apple turning up with a dump truck of cash, which is basically what they've been doing to secure component supplies, is not something they wil turn down lightly.
Apple is somewhat unique among consumer electronics companies in that it is very singly focused. Samsung, along with Sony, Microsoft, and others, are multi-conglomerates, with vast reaching business interests, and Samsung's chip fab division only really cares about the profits their division is making. Money from Apple, money from an internal cross-charge: profit is profit.
> "3. ARM aren't really a supplier to apple, they just licence designs. ARM have no manufacturing expertise."
I don't think this is what you mean. You mean ARM have no expertise manufacturing at scale. ARM have extensive manufacturing expertise, because they need to supply reference designs that work in production. ARM has manufacturing expertise because they need to produce designs that are easy to manufacture.
I would say ARM have expertise in 'designing for manufacture' which is distinct from the actual manufacturing, but lets say they have no expertise in 'production manufacturing'.
While Samsung does indeed contain a bunch of largely separate companies, both chips and phones are part of Samsung Electronics, there is one set of top management for both.
They have most likely done many calculations that clearly say "if we lose Apple on the supply side, we lose <insert ridiculous amount of money that eclipses smartphone revenue here>."
> So i maintain that Apple would have needed Samsung to enable them to use an A15.
I would guess if Apple is capable of designing their own Microarchitectures they would be perfectly capable of compiling a bunch of HDL code they can get straight from ARM. [1]
> but i still don't think they would want to give apple a CPU platform that was undoubtedly better than their flagship phone so soon after releasing it
Samsung also acts as a foundry, they manufacture designs of other people in the same sense a printing shop prints books written by other people. I don't think this involves Samsung "giving Apple a CPU platform", at least not any more.
[1] Yes, in reality thats quite a bit more complicated.
two mistakes in that phrase:
- A15 isn't Samsung's to give to Apple -- they license that from ARM. Yes, Samsung manufactures Apple's chips, but the chip is designed by Apple using IP licensed from ARM, Imagination Technologies and others, but as far as Samsung is concerned the chip is a black box.
- Samsung has given technology to Apple before they used it themselves several times in the past.
I also doubt the first part of your statement. It's early for an A15, but it's certainly within Apple's power to persuade ARM to help them get something they want to market early. Spending their billions to bend supplier's arms is one of the things that Apple does best.