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by jauntywundrkind 998 days ago
A bit off topic, it it keeps surprising me how many dedicated chips cellphones have.

iPhone 15 Pro has 10 different power management chips. It has one dedicated transmitter and two receiver chips. It has two different rf front end chips. Plus four chips for cellular modem, wifi/BT, uwb, and nfc. And then two chips for envelope tracking and clock generating.

I have this feeling that designs in general really are multi-chio, and no one bothers engineering alternatives. Almost everyone goes out and buys the recommended power supply chip for the chip they want to use. Qualcomm not having an actual decent power supply solution & just asking people to keep adding more copies of the known power supply unit seems both all too expectable & also ridiculous. And it just seems all too typical that no one, even the very upper end, isn't going to take the time & risk to engineer their own better support solution anyways.

https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+15+Pro+Max+Chip+ID/16532...
1 comments
stefan_ 998 days ago
It’s interesting. A big reason why Qualcomm got to making CPUs in the first place was that they could sell it as a value add to their modem chips everyone was using: now you can have both in one chip!

We have seen Apple try to make a modem of course, but it seems to have fizzled out again. Wonder why they never looked at WiFi/BT, it’s a lot easier and Intel recently sold theirs iirc.

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sigilis 997 days ago
Apple isn’t making WiFi/bt precisely because it’s not that hard. There are a number of potential companies they can partner with so they can negotiate better rates. CPUs and modems are different, they effectively had a single supplier that will work for their requirements which meant that they couldn’t differentiate their products from other companies and had to deal with a third party supplier who essentially had them over a barrel at the negotiating table.

If they can pull off making their own modem, Qualcomm can’t charge them like they’re the only option even if not all iPhones use the new modem. The makers of various easier to make ICs already know they are not the only option and charge accordingly.

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jjtheblunt 997 days ago
> Wonder why they never looked at WiFi/BT...

They have

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/142553-apple-acquires-...

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