Things are good for ARM Holdings, the British chip company whose designs are central to so many of the chips that make modern life modern. In 2011, some 7.9 billion chips with ARM cores in them were shipped. And yet it’s not a very big company. Where Intel clocked sales of $54 billion, ARM finished the year with sales of $777 million (491.8 million pounds). It all has to do with the differences in how they do business. ARM sells the blueprints to make a core — the central brain of a chip — and then those who buy that blueprint can build their own custom parts of a chip around it.

That means an ARM-based chip from Samsung can be significantly different from an ARM chip from Broadcom or Nvidia. And yet designers from either company could probably exchange jobs, because they’re both familiar with the basic designs. ARM has become something of a lingua franca of electronics design, except in the world of personal computers and servers. Yet with Microsoft set to release a new ARM-friendly version of Windows for notebooks and tablets, and the chip firm Calxeda working on bringing ARM chips to servers, ARM’s influence is growing.

I caught up with ARM CEO Warren East over dinner in New York last week, and we talked about how its business model is going strong, and where the ARM architecture is going.

AllThingsD: When people ask me what ARM is, I tend to liken it to a recipe for cake — a cake for which you buy the basic recipe, but which you can then enhance anyway you like. Is that a fair analogy?

East: Exactly, and the doing whatever you like is very important for our business model. If you couldn’t, and we were like Intel, say, and you had to do this one thing, the only thing our licensees could — if you were to apply a licensing model to that — the only thing they could use to compete against each other is price. Whereas this way, they can do their own stuff around the basic recipe, they can differentiate. But because it’s the same microprocessor architecture, your cake recipe, then investments they make in software, or if you’re using a combination of chips from Samsung and Nivida and Qualcomm, any investment you make toward using Samsung chips is equally applicable to the others.

And you can switch to another vendor later if you like, correct?

You can, because they all do different things. If your product is about video, then Texas Instruments’ video accelerator is very good. If it’s about 3-D graphics, then Nvidia’s chips are very good. If it’s a modem you need, then Qualcomm’s chip is very good. So you can mix and match.

And it’s not uncommon for many manufacturers, whether they’re making phones or something else, to have several ARM-based chips doing many things. In a phone, the main microprocessor will be an ARM-based chip, but then also the surrounding chips doing specialized functions will be ARM chips, as well, correct?

Right. The typical smartphone will have four or five ARM chips in it. There’s the main processor, the thing you interact with as the user. Then there’s the modem, which connects to the phone network. And then there’s a connectivity processor that handles the Bluetooth and the Wi-Fi or both. And then there may be a power management processor, or a touchscreen controller, a camera, or GPS, and so on. And the next one that’s being integrated is NFC, or Near Field Communications, for payments by phone. And your 8-bit processor in the SIM card is turning into a 32-bit microprocessor, and that will likely be an ARM, as well.

When you think about competitors, who is it? Is it MIPS? Is it Intel, perhaps, down the road?

When you think about the consumer electronics space, TVs and the like, MIPS has been very strong in that space. Increasingly, as the TVs become smarter and more connected then they start to look more and more like a smartphone with a 46-inch screen. And so, actually, the infrastructure that exists around ARM makes it very compelling to put an ARM chip in there. In the computing world then, the competition is really Intel and AMD x86 chips.

Speaking of AMD, its CEO, Rory Read, raised some eyebrows at its analyst meeting recently when he mentioned ARM and described a new “ambidextrous” approach to its chips, implying, many think, that AMD might combine its x86 cores in some way with an ARM core. Can you give any visibility into what he might mean?

We can’t tell you really anything about it. But I will say something that we’ve said about this before, when people had picked up similar noises about something like this. AMD is in the business of selling microprocessors. We’re in the business of selling microprocessor designs. We wouldn’t be doing our job properly if we weren’t at least talking to them. And so we have been, for the last 10 years or so. If those discussions go anywhere, and if and when there’s something to announce to the world, we’ll do so.

How many licensees are there? Are there any that surprise you because they’re unusual or unique?

Now there are 290 licensees. It’s a good question, and one we don’t get very often. There are all sorts of weird applications. There’s a glaucoma monitor chip that’s a cubic millimeter. It’s a pressure sensor, a solar panel, a microprocessor and a radio and a battery, all in that space, so it can be fitted inside the eye so you can be tested for glaucoma. On the other extreme, we’re in a neutrino detector that’s in a kilometers-long chain of sensors, with another sensor every few meters, down in the Antarctic. So we’re in applications that are as small as a cubic millimeter to as large as several square kilometers. Looking forward, one of the ones I’m intrigued about at the moment is with a company that makes concrete. The idea is it concerns networks of sensors that would be embedded directly in the concrete. But you get the feeling that one company is going to pour the concrete and another is going to place the sensors. But this company wants to put the sensors in in the first place. We’ll just pour the concrete with the sensors already there. It’s all about energy harvesting from the vibrations in the concrete. The processors come with little wireless communications [abilities], and use hardly any energy, because the communication is only from one sensor to the next. That one is probably a few years off, but the fact that a concrete company is thinking about this is very interesting.

The next big thing is that ARM chips are coming to traditional PCs running Windows. We’ve been hearing about it for more than a year now, and Microsoft is starting to show Windows 8. Is the opportunity for ARM in PCs real, and is it going to happen?

It’s real and it’s going to happen, and it’s absolutely on track. Obviously, the detailed timeline is a matter for Microsoft and not for us. Metro is happening. It’s a big change to the user interface. They have pioneered Metro in their mobile offering, and you can sort of see where they’re going with it. But Windows 8 is going to be about Metro. That lends itself a little more to tablets in a way that they haven’t been before. That is clearly going to happen. For us and for Microsoft there are two different objectives. For them, it’s about getting a route to support the billions of Internet-connected screens that are going to appear over the next decade or so. Most of them are going to have an ARM processor in them. Without Windows on ARM, Microsoft is excluded from those products, so they need Windows on ARM. For us, a great side effect is getting into the PC world where, outside of Apple, Windows is everything, and it has been inextricably linked to Intel and x86. So now if Windows appears on ARM, we can address those 300 million PCs that are sold each year. And for us, it’s like having an extra 300 million smartphones. It’s certainly nice to have.

In an interview, Windows unit President Steven Sinofsky said that the first ARM-based machines running Windows 8 should show up around the same time as the first Windows 8 machines running traditional PC processors from Intel and AMD. He didn’t give a time frame for when that would be, but PC manufacturers and chipmakers have said they expect it to arrive later this year.

Sinofsky also said that the Windows-on-ARM machines will come with several Office apps — Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote — that have been tuned to run in a very battery-efficient manner. But Sinofsky said that, although those applications will run in the traditional Windows desktop, they will be the only programs allowed to do so, other than components of Windows itself.

“There are no other compiled dekstop apps that are available,” Sinofsky told AllThingsD. All of the other apps for Windows on ARM will be the new-style “Metro” apps.

Windows 8 for Intel and AMD chips, by contrast, will be able to run all of the kinds of programs that have traditionally run on Windows, inside a Windows 7-like desktop environment.

Although Microsoft has said that its focus around Windows 8 would be around new-style “Metro” apps, there had been significant question as to whether, and under what circumstances, programs designed to run in a classic Windows desktop might be able to run.

Windows on ARM will have the desktop as an option for Internet Explorer, the Office apps and various system functions, such as the control panel, file management and other built-in features of Windows. Sinofsky also said that the version of Internet Explorer for Windows on ARM won’t support plugins such as Adobe Flash, noting the trend in the industry away from supporting Flash on mobile devices.

Sinofsky is also penning a several-thousand-word blog post on the subject — long even for someone known for his lengthy posts. In it, Sinofsky said, he goes into more detail on the company’s plans for Windows on ARM, as well as its rationale for some of the decisions it has made.

“There have been a lot of questions,” Sinofsky said. “I want to do my best to answer them.”

Sinofsky had already ruled out some sort of emulation mode for running older Windows apps on ARM chips, noting that the whole point of running Windows on the same kinds of ARM-based chips used for phones and tablets was to gain the kind of power efficiency those chips can deliver.

Microsoft has said it will deliver an updated “consumer preview” test version of Windows 8 on Feb. 29, with plans to tout the software at an event in Barcelona. However, that test version, like a developer preview released last fall, will be available only for machines running traditional Intel and AMD chips.

Sinofsky said the company is working with chipmakers Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments to provide a limited number of test machines to those that make software, hardware and peripherals. The machines are aimed at developers, though, with easy access to the internals, and the company has no plans to make those machines available to enthusiasts, corporate customers or other testers.

Microsoft first announced its plans to allow Windows 8 to run on ARM-based machines at CES 2011.

At the time, it showed a demo of some Office apps running on ARM chips, but showed little else of its plans for the operating system. Months before, it talked about other features of the operating system. Several months later, at our D9 conference, it showed the new Metro interface for Windows, as well as its plans to feature a whole new kind of application, and its plans for a built-in store to sell these new apps.

While the goal is to have Windows-on-ARM machines out at the same time Windows 8 lands on new traditional PCs, Sinofsky noted that there is a lot of work to be done to get the entire PC ecosystem ready.

“We’re building a whole new product, on a new platform, with new partners,” he said.

Update: Sinofsky’s blog post is up, all 8,610 words of it.

A start-up called Tilera today unveiled a chip it calls the TILE-Gx. Essentially, it’s a super-chip with 36 cores which — so the company claims — beats a traditional Intel server chip on the key metric of performance per watt.

For those who don’t keep score in the arcane world of semiconductors, I’ll revisit some of the basics of the above paragraph. We all know that Intel and its one main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, sell chips for servers. Those chips, and those that go into PCs, are generally known as x86 chips, a name derived from the instruction set they share.

On the other hand, there are ARM chips, which are a different breed, and exist in a very different ecosystem. Scores of companies make ARM-based chips for all kinds of different uses, and they license the basics of the designs from ARM, the company, which last year did $636 million in revenue.

ARM chips show up in phones and tablets from the likes of Broadcom, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Nvidia, but not so much in PCs and servers. ARM is even the basis for Apple’s A4 and A5 chips. At CES last year, Microsoft said it would create a version of Windows 8 that will support ARM chips. And a company called Calxeda (which I initially got mixed up with Tilera) is aiming to bring ARM cores to chips running in servers.

Tilera, based in San Jose, Calif., is backed by investments from Bessemer Venture Partners, Walden International, Columbia Capital and VentureTech Alliance; plus a trio of strategic investors, Quanta Computer, NTT Finance and Broadcom. Its new chip is based around an entirely new architecture developed by Tilera’s CTO Anant Agarwal, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It forgoes both the traditional x86 and ARM architectures. Aimed squarely at servers, its intention is to get the same work done that a traditional Intel server chip does, while using less power to do it.

That’s not a trivial benefit, especially in data center environments where servers are bunched together and pushed to the performance limit. The biggest operational expense in running them is going to be power. So it’s on this point that server vendors and chip vendors obsess over saving a watt here and there — over the machine’s useful lifetime, the costs will add up considerably.

How it does this is what makes it interesting. Essentially, the cores on the chip do something that an Intel chip can’t do: They communicate among themselves. The way I understand it — and I admit I’m simplifying it greatly — the cores on an x86 chip rely on a single communications channel, called the Bus, to communicate. The Tilera architecture allows each core to communicate directly with the other cores, thus eliminating the need for the Bus and cutting back on the need for power.

The top-end chip — there are two versions — has 36 cores. A core is essentially the main computing engine on a chip. If you’re reading this on a PC, chances are the chip inside it has two cores, maybe four. It used to be that chips had only one core, until it became logical to put two or more on a single chip. I’ve always compared multicore chips to roommates folding laundry together. When there’s a big pile of laundry to be folded, one person can certainly do it, but two or four get it done faster and with less effort. Multicore chips basically prove the old adage that many hands make for fast work.

There’s an obvious appeal to a chip like this, but there are a lot of strikes against it. First, much of the server ecosystem is pretty well entrenched. Companies run what applications they already have, and are usually loath to mess with their computing environments much. Changing the architecture of the CPU chip inside the servers is about as major a decision as a CIO may ever make, and one they don’t make lightly. First they’ll have to test it and run it for awhile, and then see how it interacts with other systems. It’s not the sort of decision that happens just overnight. Also, a new architecture brings with it a lot of software compatibility questions that will give many IT departments pause.

Meanwhile, Intel, which sells chips that go into most of the world’s mainstream servers, will continue to push its power consumption down. At the same time, it’s been trying like crazy to use its Atom line of chips to mount an attack on ARM’s territory and win business from phone and tablet vendors. That effort is just now seeing its first early successes. If there’s a great long-term story in chips that bears watching, the grappling between Intel and the ever-expanding universe of ARM vendors is certainly it.

Correction: I initially thought the Tilera chip was based on the ARM architecture. I’ve revised the story to correct that.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Intel is showing a working reference design that it is offering to any phone maker that wants to use its chips. The phone itself packs a 1.6GHz single-core Atom chip along with an array of sensors and radios.

“The sample platform we have is fully buzzword compliant,” General Manager Mike Bell said in an interview.

The company has been testing thousands of phones internally and says the performance is top of class, with battery life at least as good as most Android devices.

“We are not the best at power, but we are definitely very, very competitive,” Bell said.

Compatibility is another issue that Bell said he is asked about a lot. Nearly all Java-based Android apps should run, as well as a good number of those designed specifically for chips based on cores from rival ARM.

“We think that gets rid of the last argument people have,” Bell said.

Of course, Intel faces plenty of competition in the phone chip space, including existing Android chip providers Qualcomm, Nvidia, Texas Instruments and other challengers, such as Broadcom.

Intel is announcing two phone customers running its chips — a Lenovo phone for China slated to be released in the first half of the year and a multi-year, multi-device alliance with Motorola Mobility that will begin with a phone in the second half of the year.

Although Intel announced only the two customers, Bell indicated more names will be coming soon. (Think next month’s Mobile World Congress for an update.)

“You can imagine our business is all about scale,” he said, declining to say how many phone designs are being built around its chips, or how many customers it has.

In a roundtable with reporters, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha said he was attracted to the chipmaker by both its roadmap and its approach, which focuses as much on running multiple instructions on a single chip core as it does on packing in as many cores as possible.

“What they have done is multithreading vs. multicore,” Jha said, noting there is a big debate in computer science as to which is better. Jha said that, along with other innovations like three-dimensional transistors, this will be important as the laws of physics prevent rapid performance gains just by shrinking the size of transistors.

Intel has focused its phone efforts entirely on Android for now, noting that it believes it has more people working on Android than Google does.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20120110/intel-shows-just-how-it-plans-to-get-into-phones-video/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111221/intel-to-detail-its-phone-plans-at-ces-next-month/ http://allthingsd.com/20111221/intel-to-detail-its-phone-plans-at-ces-next-month/#comments Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:17:30 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=155876 Intel plans to use next month’s Consumer Electronics Show as the launching point for its effort to get serious in the market for the chips that power smartphones.

The company has come up with an iPhone-esque prototype of an Android device running its chip. More than just a concept device, though, the phone (pictured here) is a fully baked design that Intel is making freely available for phone makers to use in whole or in part.

“You’ll see a number of Intel customers using the guts of this phone to go into the market in the first half of next year,” CEO Paul Otellini said at a Credit Suisse investor conference last month. “And we’ll have more announcements of that at CES.”

Otellini is slated to give a keynote speech at the Las Vegas event on Jan. 10, so that would be a logical place for any news, though the company has also scheduled a notebook-related press conference for the prior day.

Technology Review posted a story on Tuesday, talking about Intel’s efforts and quoting Intel as saying the phones should hit the market in the first half of 2012. However, Otellini suggested in his Credit Suisse speech that Intel is aiming to have products out there sooner rather than later.

“We’ll be shipping in the first quarter of next year,” Otellini said.

Intel has previously talked about its plans for phones, and Android in particular, including at its September developer conference, when Otellini invited Android chief Andy Rubin on stage to talk about Google’s work to make Intel chips a first-class citizen for future Android releases.

The chip giant faces a host of competitors as it enters the space, including the current Android leaders — Qualcomm, Texas Instruments and Nvidia. Broadcom has also said it has designs on the market, particularly the low end, an area dominated by MediaTek.

Though cognizant of the competition, Intel has said its tests show its reference design as a solid competitor not just on performance, but also in the all-important area of battery life, where many have felt that Intel could not compete with ARM-based processors.

The move is about more than phones, though. Intel already faces steep competition from ARM and Apple in the tablet arena, and with Windows 8 it will also see challenges on the PC side of things.

Leading Intel’s effort are former Infineon executive Hermann Eul, and former Apple and Palm executive Mike Bell. The chipmaker recently reorganized its mobile efforts, putting the two executives in charge of all aspects of the project.

After years of talking about being in the smartphone processor game, it will be interesting to see if Intel can actually make some headway.

MORE CES NEWS:

• Complete coverage
• HP’s Former CTO: Ultrabooks Are Nothing New, webOS Still Has Life Yet
• Walt Shows Off CES Gadgets for Fox Business News (Video)
• What Kind of Web Video Plans Does Sony Have? (Video)
• Fujitsu Seeking Way Into Crowded U.S. Smartphone Market
• Why Rhapsody Is (Probably) Bigger Than Spotify — In the U.S.
• Microsoft Beefing Up CeBit Presence Even as It Pulls Back on CES
• Inside the CES Lost & Found
• FCC Chairman Has New Tablet, but Same Script: More Spectrum!
• Verizon Wireless: We Want to Connect Five Devices for Every Subscriber
• Ultrabooks From HP and Lenovo That Are (Kinda, Sorta) Different
• Walt and Katie Take a Tour of CES (Video)
• Schmidt-Storm Alert: The Google Chairman Didn’t Like Your Question
• T-Mobile Expands Bobsled Messaging Service
• Intel Shows Just How It Plans to Get Into Phones (Video)
• Motorola CEO: We’re Going to Release Fewer Phones This Year
• Kinect Helps Keep Aging Xbox at the Top of Its Game
• More From T-Mobile CEO: On Pricing, LTE and That Ever-Elusive iPhone
• Exclusive: New Boss Acknowledges Windows Phone Still Has “Awareness Problem”
• And You Thought Jawbone UP Was Going to Miss the CES Party!
• Interview: T-Mobile CEO Says No Second AT&T Deal Out There
• Grover Is at CES and I Am Missing It
• BlueStacks Bringing Android Apps to Windows 8
• Why the Future of TV Won’t Be Here Soon
• Nvidia’s Tegra 3 Tries to Save Battery in All Sorts of Different Ways
• Dynamic Dual Coverage: Ballmer’s Last Act in Vegas and the BCS Championship in 3-D
• Microsoft Phoning In Its Last CES Keynote
• Myspace — Yes, Myspace — Says It’s Going to Sell You Web TV
• Samsung Unveils “Super” 55-Inch OLED TV
• Nokia Unveils That LTE Windows Phone It’s Been Dying to Share
• Steve Ballmer Gives Ralph De La Vega a Very … Vigorous Greeting (Video)
• Interview: AT&T’s De La Vega on LTE, Tablets and Life After T-Mobile
• AT&T’s De La Vega: Shared Data Plans Still in the Works
• LG: 55-Inch Glasses-Free 3-D Screen Is on the Way
• LG Pushes 4G Smartphone Through Verizon: The LG Spectrum
• Live: AT&T’s Vegas Act Stars LTE and, Making Her Return to the Stage, Nokia
• CES Notebook: The Constant Search for Power and Vegas’ Worst-kept Secret
• Belkin Bringing Mobile TV to Lots of Cellphones, Will Anyone Tune In?
• Acer Introduces “World’s Thinnest” Ultrabook and a “Me-Too” Cloud Service
• There Better Be Some Cool Stuff at CES, Because CE Holiday Sales Data Bytes!
• CES 2012: Snooki and Bieber Are In, Gaga Is Out!
• Coming to a Smartphone Near You: Gorilla Glass 2
• RIM Hopes Next PlayBook OS Will Impress at CES
• Ultrabooks, the Ultra-Fancy New Name for Laptops
• At CES, Expect More Gadgets Telling You to Get Off the Couch
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Microsoft Pulling Out of CES After Upcoming Show
• Intel to Detail Its Phone Plans at CES Next Month
• Dell Will Drop the Flashy Vegas Act for CES This Year
• Ultrabook Conga Line Preps for CES 2012

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111221/intel-to-detail-its-phone-plans-at-ces-next-month/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111118/how-thrilled-is-texas-instruments-to-have-its-chips-in-the-kindle-fire/ http://allthingsd.com/20111118/how-thrilled-is-texas-instruments-to-have-its-chips-in-the-kindle-fire/#comments Fri, 18 Nov 2011 18:03:18 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=145720 This morning, I awoke to something I never thought I’d see. It was an email message, and what it contained was so rare that I thought I had to share it with you.

Yesterday, I published a story about the teardown analysis by IHS iSuppli of Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet. And, as you may remember, the story related how, in the opinion of its analysts, it cost Amazon $201.70 to buy the parts and build the Fire — a sum which is only slightly above the $199 retail price of the device.

The other big news was how dominant the chipmaker Texas Instruments is among the suppliers. Its applications processor chip, wireless chips, and audio and power management chips add up to about $25, approximately 12 percent of the bill of materials (BOM), which is the aggregate cost of all the components. It’s a pretty solid victory for TI in the competitive tablet field, where, outside of Apple’s iPad, success has been rare.

Naturally, I asked Texas Instruments for a comment about this, and expected none. I’ve been writing teardown stories for six years (here’s the first I ever did); never once has the manufacturer of the device in question, nor any of its suppliers, given anything more than a “no comment.”

Manufacturers tend to hate teardowns because they’re invasive. Take a product apart and you find out who a company is working with — and you learn a lot about how they see things. With the Kindle Fire, for example, we learned that Amazon deliberately took a “less is more” approach to keep costs down, minimize its loss and pave the way to eventually selling the device at a profit.

Suppliers hate teardowns, too. There is nothing more secret — or more interesting to know — than what company is supplying a manufacturer with a key component. Companies can rise or fall on a strategic relationship with someone like Apple or HP — or Amazon. The first iPod, for example, put an otherwise unknown company named PortalPlayer on the map — until Apple replaced its chips with something else. Now that company is part of Nvidia.

Usually these suppliers are unwilling to rock the boat, and usually they’re covered by nondisclosure agreements. So when I do the typical reporter thing and call them for a comment, after a teardown clearly shows their chip or display or other component inside the product, the supplier always — 100 percent of the time, without exception — says, “No comment.” Probably they’d like nothing more than to brag about how their chip makes this or that product do amazing things, but usually they just can’t, won’t and just don’t say a word.

Until today. Today, in response to my questions of yesterday, I got a comment from Texas Instruments. And that meant I just had to share it. Here it is, courtesy of a company spokeswoman:

“We can confirm that TI’s OMAP4430 processor and WiLink 6.0 connectivity combo solution are inside of the Kindle Fire. … TI is thrilled to be a part of the Amazon Kindle Fire, which boasts powerful performance and engaging consumer experiences that are sure to make it a coveted device this holiday season.”

Not exactly riveting. But rare!

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111118/how-thrilled-is-texas-instruments-to-have-its-chips-in-the-kindle-fire/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111117/kindle-fire-costs-about-203-to-build-teardown-finds/ http://allthingsd.com/20111117/kindle-fire-costs-about-203-to-build-teardown-finds/#comments Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:06:24 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=145351 Amazon.com’s Kindle Fire tablet appears to cost about as much to make as it sells for — maybe a little more. That’s about $203 $202, according to a teardown analysis by IHS iSuppli.

This essentially confirms what everyone has suspected for a while — that Amazon expects to lose a little money up front on the $199 Fire, in hope of selling in volume. It also hopes to make more money on sales of the digital media and physical goods consumers may order from Amazon on the device.

Andrew Rassweiler, the IHS iSuppli analyst who supervised the teardown, said the analysis is still under way, and that the firm may reduce its final estimate slightly. Update: It’s done: The final figure is $201.70.

That Amazon’s model with the Kindle Fire is essentially the opposite of rival Apple’s has been understood for some time. Apple’s iTunes store runs at or slightly above the break-even point, and encourages the sale of higher-margin hardware like the iPad, iPhone and iPod. The teardown study gives both a rough idea of how much Amazon can realistically expect to lose on the Fire, and also the extent to which it took steps to minimize those losses.

There are several examples of where Amazon clearly intended to minimize its hardware costs, Rassweiler says. For one thing, most tablets contain 8 gigabytes gigabits of DRAM memory. The Fire contains only four. It also contains only 8GB of flash memory used for storing content, where the iPad starts at 16GB and goes up to 64GB. Amazon also skipped other features, like a camera and Bluetooth connectivity, and more expensive wireless chips.

“All the choices have been made here to minimize the hardware cost,” Rassweiler says. “We expected to see a certain wireless module that’s commonly been seen in other tablets, and we were surprised that it wasn’t there. There was a cheaper one with fewer features that saved them a few bucks.” The chips were combined into a module manufactured by a previously unknown company called Jorjin, he says.

The box contents are also minimal. The box the Kindle Fire ships in is the same box it comes in when sold by third-party retailers like Best Buy. And the only accessories inside are a wall charger and a cord. Rassweiler says iSuppli initially expected the box contents to cost more than $5; instead, the cost is closer to $2 or $3. “Amazon’s approach was to take out everything they didn’t need,” he says.

But, as is always the rule with consumer electronics, prices come down. That $25 worth of TI chips will cost about $12 in the near future, meaning that Amazon will in time be able to sell the same device, but at a much lower cost to build. Of course, if it’s successful, consumers will want one that’s a little more fabulous, perhaps with a bigger screen, perhaps.

Inside the Fire, chipmaker Texas Instruments appeared to be the big winner, supplying numerous chips that combined for about $25, about 12 percent of the total materials cost. One TI chip, the OMAP4430, is the main applications processor in the Fire. It has previously been seen in the Droid Bionic, the LG Optimus and Research In Motion’s PlayBook. TI also supplied chips that help manage audio, power and Wi-Fi.

It’s a victory for TI, which appears to have beat out Qualcomm, who supplied Hewlett-Packard with the applications chip in its now-abandoned TouchPad tablet, as well as Nvidia and Broadcom, who have been competing for business with other tablet outfits.

South Korea’s LG Electronics supplied the display. LG has a relationship with E Ink Holdings, the company that has supplied the displays on Kindles, and also Barnes & Noble’s Nook, since the beginning. LG is also thought to supply displays for the iPad to Apple.

Along with the display are touchscreen components. Rassweiler says the touchscreen controller chip is from a previously unknown supplier known as Ilitek. The appearance of lesser-known suppliers for these components is increasingly common, Rassweiler says. A surge in demand for touch devices has brought forth a bumper crop of new companies supplying the components that make them work.

Amazon declined to comment directly on iSuppli’s findings, but CFO Thomas Szkutak said in an Oct. 25 conference call with analysts that the company is counting on the device to serve as a platform for the sale of content; Szkutak emphasized the “lifetime value” of the device.

It may just work. Amazon is said to be seeing higher-than-expected demand for the Fire, and is reported to have ordered another million units from its manufacturing partner, Taiwan’s Quanta Computer. Still, it will take many more than that to make a dent in iPad sales.

Amazon shares fell by more than 4 percent today. The shares are down from a recent peak, after the company disclosed an earnings miss on Oct. 25.

Click to see a bigger version of the exploded view, courtesy of iSuppli, below:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111117/kindle-fire-costs-about-203-to-build-teardown-finds/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20111019/say-when-did-apple-become-an-enterprise-company/ http://allthingsd.com/20111019/say-when-did-apple-become-an-enterprise-company/#comments Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:45:18 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=134054 Perhaps it’s just that I haven’t dialed in to an Apple earnings call in more than a year since leaving my old job. But it sure sounded like a new thing to me when Apple CEO Tim Cook rattled off a list of large companies using the iPhone.

Here’s the direct quote taken from the transcript:

“IPhone continues to be adopted as the standard across the enterprise with 93 percent of the Fortune 500 deploying or testing the device, up from 91 percent last quarter and 60 percent of the Global 500 testing or deploying iPhone, up from 57 percent last quarter. A recent example of iPhone’s enterprise success is Lowe’s. Lowe’s is in the process of rolling out over 40,000 iPhones with a custom application to allow their store associates to execute real-time inventory checks, product orders and interactive customers with how-to videos.

Additional examples of companies around the world supporting iPhone on their corporate networks include L’Oreal, Royal Bank of Scotland, SAP, Texas Instruments, Jacobs Engineering Group, Tenet Healthcare, Jaguar Land Rover, Takeda Pharmaceuticals, Lincoln National and CSX Corporation. And of course, we’re thrilled to begin shipping iPhone 4S this month.”

And later, a similar section devoted to the iPad:

“Every day, we learn about innovative new ways our enterprise customers are using iPad. The airline industry is a great example of the momentum we’re seeing. United Continental Holdings is putting iPads in every cockpit to replace heavy, paper-based flight bags. In Japan, All Nippon Airways is now using iPad in training programs for flight attendants.

Sonic Automotive is using iPad for customer check-in at the service department and also to provide analytics to regional managers. Aflac, Biogen and General Mills have developed internal apps that their field sales teams leverage daily, and technicians of Siemens Energy are bringing iPads along when they do maintenance work at the top of their wind turbines.”

It turns out that it’s not a new thing, exactly. Cook has recited similar lists on Apple conference calls before. But as recently as 2008, when Businessweek published its cover story called “The Mac in the Gray Flannel Suit” (which, full disclosure, I worked on), Apple was generally considered an outsider in the enterprise IT business, and Apple products a novelty in the office. In broad brushstrokes, Macs tended to show up at media and advertising companies, and in the creative and marketing departments of other companies. The iPhone, and later the iPad, changed all that.

Here’s about as good an indication of that trend as I’ve ever seen: Intermedia, a company that operated a hosted Microsoft Exchange service for small and mid-sized businesses, said earlier this month that among its 41,000 customers, 78 percent are using Apple devices to get their mail, contact lists and calendars.

Meanwhile, look at all the companies that have developed enterprise applications for iOS: Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Citrix immediately come to mind. And Tidemark — the business intelligence start-up I wrote about yesterday — is iPad-ready from the start. There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of examples I’m missing.

Apple has cumulatively sold 40 million iPads since the device launched last year. The company doesn’t offer much in the way of a data breakdown of how many of those are sold to businesses, but it almost doesn’t matter, because in so many cases, people buy one and just take it to the office. When you hear the phrase “consumerization of IT,” which already feels pretty worn out to me, it refers mostly to people who want to use iOS devices at work, and to a lesser extent, Google’s Android. A recent survey of 750 IT managers found that the iPhone led the pack of personal devices used at work, followed by Android Phones and the iPad.

I probably shouldn’t be surprised by all this, but when I heard Tim Cook list all those big companies using iThings to get things done, it finally dawned on me: Apple is as much an enterprise story as it is a consumer story.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20111019/say-when-did-apple-become-an-enterprise-company/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110915/is-windows-8-just-the-bold-bet-that-microsoft-needed/ http://allthingsd.com/20110915/is-windows-8-just-the-bold-bet-that-microsoft-needed/#comments Thu, 15 Sep 2011 12:30:53 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=120387 For years, Microsoft has prided itself on being able to show the latest version of Windows running even the oldest of applications.

This week, however, Redmond is striking a very different tone in introducing Windows 8. Although any programs that ran in Windows 7 should do just fine in the new release, Microsoft is putting nearly all of its energy around a whole new type of application that is quite unlike the Windows programs of yesteryear.

A scan of the session list at Microsoft’s Build developer conference in Anaheim, Calif., reveals dozens designed around building the new “Metro-style” applications, and almost no programs focused on traditional Windows applications.

Also, as one reporter pointed out to me, it’s worth noting that the new-look Windows has no windows. Nor do the new kind of apps have visible menus or other hallmarks of the venerable desktop operating system. Instead, new Windows applications fill the entire screen and are navigated largely through touch, with needed commands brought up with the swipe of a finger.

And although Windows 8 will run older programs, there are clear signs that Microsoft is ready to break with tradition. Older Windows apps share space on one screen — the desktop. That’s the same amount of screen real estate that all other apps have to themselves. And while both new and old apps will run on Intel-based Windows 8 machines, Microsoft is only promising that new-style programs will run on the forthcoming machines using ARM-based chips from Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

It’s a major shift that Microsoft has resisted making for many years. Even as rivals like Apple and Palm went back to the drawing board and redesigned their operating systems for the Internet age, Microsoft chose to make evolutionary improvements to Windows while maintaining nearly full compatibility with the past.

Change is clearly needed. After years of dominating the computing universe, Microsoft has seen a number of incursions into its core business. A resurgent Mac has grabbed a significant share of the computer market, while the iPad and other mobile devices have also taken momentum and sales away from the traditional computer business.

And as much as Microsoft needs an answer to the iPad — and it clearly does — the threat posed to today’s Windows extends far beyond the tablet. The type of mobile computing that dominates the smartphone and tablet markets today is poised to move into laptops and desktops, as well. On the laptop side, in particular, customers clearly want the same thinness and long battery life that is found on tablets.

The only way for Microsoft to get there with Windows was to break with the past. Microsoft indicated its willingness to go in new directions back in January, when it announced that Windows 8 would support ARM-based processors. With this week’s announcement, Microsoft is showing that it is willing to go a step further and sacrifice some backward compatibility to produce more competitive products.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110915/is-windows-8-just-the-bold-bet-that-microsoft-needed/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110913/windows-8-forces-some-compromises-after-all/ http://allthingsd.com/20110913/windows-8-forces-some-compromises-after-all/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:39:10 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=119965 Steven Sinofsky talks about Windows 8 as a “no compromise” operating system, but the fact is there are some trade-offs to be made.

Although the new Windows offers a number of upsides, including the fact it runs on a wider range of processors, such flexibility comes at a cost.

Systems that run Windows 8 using low-power ARM processors will be able to run all of the new-style Windows applications, but it appears few traditional Windows programs will run. Microsoft demonstrated a technology preview of Office running on ARM back in January, but Sinofsky said that in general older Windows applications won’t run on ARM-based machines.

That’s not to say Microsoft didn’t make the right choices when it comes to Windows 8. Were Microsoft to have brought over all of its legacy to the new chips, it might well have lost the long battery life and other benefits that ARM-based systems can provide.

A strong case can be made that this break with the past is exactly what Microsoft needed in order to compete with a new generation of devices running operating systems designed with mobility in mind.

However, the choice means that Microsoft and its partners will need lots of new apps to make Windows 8 a success. Indeed, a big part of this week’s Build conference will be equipping developers with the tools they need to write such programs and convincing them of the upside of doing so.

Recognizing this, some of Redmond’s partners are taking matters into their own hands. Nvidia, for example, plans its own program to convince developers to write new-style Windows apps.

“We’re going to be investing in our own effort to get developers on board,” Nvidia General Manager Rene Haas said in an interview.

But if the company faces challenges getting developers to write the new apps, Haas said he is not worried about finding PC makers willing to make machines with the ARM-based processors. Such systems, he said, can be slimmer and cheaper and offer better battery life than those running traditional PC processors from Intel and AMD, he said.

“We’ve seen very big OEM interest,” Haas said, using the industry term for PC makers. “Virtually every OEM around the world wants to do something with Windows-on-ARM.”

Related posts

• Exclusive: Making Sense of Our First Look at Windows 8
• Windows 8 Gets Ready for Its Big Debut
• Gearing Up for Microsoft’s Big Week
• Microsoft Details Windows 8 at Build Conference in Anaheim
• What We Just Learned About Windows 8
• Microsoft Releases First Test Version of Windows 8
• Windows 8 Forces Some Compromises After All
• Boys and Their Toys: Developers Rush to Get Windows 8 Tablets
• Windows 8 Shows Its Server Side
• Ballmer: 500,000 Downloads of Windows 8 Since Last Night

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110913/windows-8-forces-some-compromises-after-all/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110912/gearing-up-for-microsofts-big-week/ http://allthingsd.com/20110912/gearing-up-for-microsofts-big-week/#comments Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:30:39 +0000 Ina Fried http://allthingsd.com/?p=119421 For years, Microsoft has faced the theoretical concern of Windows becoming less relevant in a world where the computer was one device among many, rather than the centerpiece.

With the rise of the smartphone and the emergence of the tablet, that threat has become real. Now, as the pressure mounts, Microsoft is due to make its case for why Windows can not only hang on to the desktop, but finally deliver on the tablet promises it has been making for a decade.

At a developer conference in Anaheim, Calif., the company is expected to offer a great deal more detail on Windows 8 — the next version of the operating system first shown at our D9 event in June. Windows 8 boasts a touchy-feely new interface, literally, along with a whole new means for writing Windows apps. Also, in a shift, Windows will run on the same kinds of ARM chips that power many of today’s smartphones and tablets.

With the changes, Windows chief Steven Sinofsky says Microsoft is in a position to deliver a “no compromise” operating system that is equally at home on small tablets and powerful desktops.

Some are hoping that Microsoft would go a step further and announce some sort of plan to allow Windows Phone apps to run on Windows 8. That, however, seems unlikely. While Windows and Windows Phone may someday converge, for now the two remain on different architectures.

Whatever Microsoft has to say, AllThingsD will be on hand to make sure our readers don’t miss a beat.

Redmond will also be talking about its bottom line, holding a financial analysts’ meeting on Wednesday. And since it is bringing out its big guns, AllThingsD is doing the same, with Kara Swisher joining me in Anaheim to bring her wit and wisdom to that part.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110912/gearing-up-for-microsofts-big-week/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110703/hps-touchpad-teardown-its-deepest-secrets-revealed/ http://allthingsd.com/20110703/hps-touchpad-teardown-its-deepest-secrets-revealed/#comments Sun, 03 Jul 2011 21:26:41 +0000 Arik Hesseldahl http://allthingsd.com/?p=94147

What would the release of a headline-grabbing new consumer electronics device be without a handful of people buying them only to take them apart to see what’s going on inside?

So it goes with Hewlett-Packard’s TouchPad, the webOS-based answer to the king of tablet computing, Apple’s iPad. The teardown team at market research firm IHS iSuppli picked one up only to skulk around its insides. The picture at right (which you can click to make bigger) is the exploded view of the device.

ISuppli isn’t the only place that does these teardown reports, but it’s one of the few that also estimates the combined cost of the parts and materials used to build the device. These bills of materials, or “BOM” estimates, as they’re called in industry parlance, are important indicators of the kind of profit margin a company can expect to see on a device on a per-unit basis. The BOM doesn’t take into account other costs that are impossible to estimate, such as software development, licensing of any intellectual property, distribution or marketing.

So what does the TouchPad cost to build? The teardown by iSuppli pegs the cost of the components used in the 16 gigabyte version, which sells for $499 at retail, at $306.65. Meanwhile, the 32GB version, which sells for $599, costs $328.65 to build. (The difference, obviously, is memory.) HP didn’t immediately comment on iSuppli’s findings.

As is often the case with tablets and notebooks, the display is the most expensive component in the device. In this case, HP went with a proven winner. It selected a 9.7-inch display from LG Electronics that is thought to be either identical or very similar to the LG-made display Apple used in the first-generation iPad. Andrew Rassweiler, iSuppli’s senior director for teardowns, pegged the cost at $69.

Internally speaking, the similarities to the iPad end there, Rassweiler told me. The components connected to the display that enable the touch-sensitive interface are different from those on the iPad. Where Apple has favored chips from Broadcom and Texas Instruments, HP has gone with a set of six chips from Cypress Semiconductor to control the touchscreen. It costs $11.75, which makes it one of the more expensive touchscreen driver products on the market, Rassweiler said. Additionally, materials used to build the capacitive glass assembly that overlays the LCD display cost another $63.50. All in, components related to the display come to a subtotal of $144.25, iSuppli estimates.

The next most expensive set of components is the memory. For the NAND-flash memory used for storing data, HP selected SanDisk’s iNAND chips. The iSuppli teardown reckons that HP paid $23 for 16GB, and $45 for 32GB. Samsung provided 8GB worth of system memory (DRAM) for both models, at an estimated cost of $26.

he TouchPad’s main application processor is interesting both for who made it — Qualcomm — and for what it isn’t: A full-fledged member of its Snapdragon chip family. “This appears to be a Snapdragon derivative without the baseband functions that would normally be seen on a Snapdragon,” Rassweiler told me. The chip costs $20, iSuppli estimates. Chances are a fully enabled Snapdragon chip will be used in a future model, he said.

For now, as The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg noted in his review of the TouchPad last week, the device is Wi-Fi only, but a model with the ability to connect to cellular networks is planned.

It’s also clear from the teardown, Rassweiler said, that there’s room for the addition of other components in the future. And other things are missing.

“We noticed there’s a gyroscope chip and an accelerometer, but we couldn’t find any GPS chips,” he said. “Plus, when we looked at the design we noticed there seems to be a lot of breathing room inside to add additional parts without having to change the design.” More stuff to expect from a future 3G-ready TouchPad.

Qualcomm supplied several other chips. Its newly acquired Atheros subsidiary provided the Wi-Fi chips, at a cost of $2.60, and two power management chips that cost another $5 combined. Texas Instruments supplied four chips — three related to power management and one display interface chip — that added $4.50 to the cost.

Of course, the TouchPad is not only intended to be a successful device on its own for HP, but represents a new strategic opportunity. As in, HP wants to license the webOS on the TouchPad to other manufacturers.

That makes it something of a showcase for the software’s capabilities. HP CEO Léo Apotheker discussed this possibility in his appearance last month at the ninth D: All Things Digital conference.

You can see his comments on the subject from the highlight clip below. And you can see the full interview here:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110703/hps-touchpad-teardown-its-deepest-secrets-revealed/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110608/texas-instruments-cuts-outlook-citing-nokia/ http://allthingsd.com/20110608/texas-instruments-cuts-outlook-citing-nokia/#comments Wed, 08 Jun 2011 23:31:49 +0000 Shara Tibken http://allthingsd.com/?p=84585 Semiconductor maker Texas Instruments Inc. reduced its expectations for the second quarter because of weaker demand from wireless customer Nokia Corp.

TI’s lowered guidance, announced at the company’s midquarter update Wednesday, comes after Nokia last week sharply lowered its sales forecast. The Finnish handset maker, a big customer of TI chips, has been struggling to keep up in a smartphone market increasingly dominated by rivals like Google Inc. and Apple Inc.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110608/texas-instruments-cuts-outlook-citing-nokia/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110418/ti-profit-inches-higher-but-japan-weighs-on-results/ http://allthingsd.com/20110418/ti-profit-inches-higher-but-japan-weighs-on-results/#comments Mon, 18 Apr 2011 22:45:31 +0000 Don Clark and Shara Tibken http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=39074 Texas Instruments Inc. provided more evidence of the financial fallout from the earthquake in Japan, which hurt the chip maker’s first-quarter results and is expected to hold down growth in the current period as well.

The Dallas-based company had already issued warnings about the impact on its two factories in the quake zone. In reporting first-quarter results Monday, TI put costs associated with the disaster at $30 million, which reduced earnings per share for the period ended in March by about two cents. In addition, the company suffered about $20 million in lost sales, said Ron Slaymaker, TI’s vice president of investor relations.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110418/ti-profit-inches-higher-but-japan-weighs-on-results/feed/ 0