Between technological failure, brain drain and repeated lawsuits, the Cupertino giant’s department responsible for Apple silicon chips would be shaken from all sides. Enough that Apple is losing control for the first time in over a decade?
Apple is at war. A silent, underhanded war that the California giant will not win. A war made up of multiple fronts, brain drains, legal action and obvious technological failures.
No sign of ray tracing
Let’s start with that last point. Mediatek with its Dimensity 9000 and Qualcomm with its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 have reached a new milestone this year, just a few days apart. Both SoCs support hardware-accelerated ray tracing. An important advantage in the world of video games, of course, and also in 3D graphics rendering tools. Nothing on the part of Apple and the A16 Bionic, while ray tracing has long been integrated into the Metal API.
According to The Information, the first prototypes of the A16 Bionic would have been compatible with ray tracing. But the integration of this technology in the chip would have been definitively abandoned because it was too energy hungry, made the SoC heat up too much and compromised the autonomy of the peripherals. The software simulations of the A16 Bionic architecture with ray tracing came into question, which would not have been precise enough. However, Apple engineers would have noticed this problem too late in the development of the chip to be able to offer a plan B that was really worthy of their ambitions. That would explain why there is so little difference between the A15 Bionic and the A16 Bionic in the end.
The manifestation of a deep evil
But this technological failure would ultimately be just the tip of a much more worrying iceberg. Since purchasing the PA Semi, the first iPad, iPhone 4 and A4, Apple teams have worked to create chips that allow their company’s products to differentiate themselves from the competition. They ensure the material part of the integration between hardware and software that is indispensable for Apple. To the point that the Ax chips regularly give the La, ensuring an essential coexistence between good performance and reduced power consumption.
However, for a generation or two, the gains in terms of CPU performance have been reduced. This could be explained by the fact that the guaranteed power level is now sufficient for everything and more. But The Information sees it as a harbinger of a deeper evil.
Apple- Screenshot 01net.com
According to The Information, the team responsible for developing Apple silicon chips is at the center of the turmoil. It has suffered regular brain drain in recent years. Renowned engineers who have proven themselves at Apple and sometimes in companies before the giant buys them out are leaving.
This is particularly true of Gerard Williams III, ex-ARM, spent nine years (from 2010 to 2019) at Apple, where he was the chief architect of the CPUs of the chips integrated into iPhone, iPad and of course later Macs. . He left the Cupertino giant to start his own company, Nuvia, before it was bought by… Qualcomm in 2021. Six months after his departure, he was also sued by Apple, who accused him of using his intellectual property within Nuvia. The California giant also criticized it, and perhaps most of all, for poaching key elements from Apple’s chip development teams.
Two lawsuits that Tim Cook’s company also filed in court last May against another start-up, Rivos, which allegedly also “stole” some key brains. No fewer than forty engineers were interested in the young company. Two of them would even have left gigabytes of data, which a priori belonged to Apple, if we are to believe the complaint published by Portal at the time.
Apple ignites a backfire for the aftermath
Since then, Apple would have played a little internal communications game to convince its most valuable employees to stay on the job. He would commend the stability and satisfaction that one can have from working for a company as powerful as Apple, especially in an economic context that could only get tougher in the months and years to come. In late 2021, Apple also announced up to $180,000 in stock awards for its most valuable talent.
In other words, according to The Information’s very sombre portrait, Johnny Srouji, the big boss of Apple’s silicon division, is not yet at the end of his tether. He was even personally touched by his exits where he saw right and tight arms go.
The small world of semiconductors is full of examples and anecdotes where one brain could make all the difference and restart a huge project – we think in particular of Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, who was able to get her company back on track. . The question now is, does Apple still have that brain in its ranks…or those brains? Because the stakes are enormous. With the decision to take matters into their own hands with Apple silicon chips, the Californian company wanted to become completely independent. But that independence is only possible if its teams keep innovating and moving forward. Somewhat paradoxically, Apple relies on its independence. He can only rely on himself… This makes this crisis all the more worrying.
In the meantime, the Cupertino giant can expect another year of development and the arrival of 3nm engraving at TSMC by the end of the year – in a few days there will be a ceremony to open the first factory. from the Taiwanese giant compatible with this production node. That should help, but one thing is for sure, Johnny Srouji’s teams have to work hard not to be caught or even overtaken by the competition…
Source: The Information