I'm also curious about this. And, even moreso - did apple just start designing c...

dagmx · 2025-09-30T20:30:09 1759264209

It’s not out of nowhere. It’s just that people didn’t pay attention to their mobile chips.

But Anandtech had articles as far back as the A12 7 years ago where it was competing with the intel chips of the era

A secondhand link because anandtech is restructured now unfortunately https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10/05/apples-a12-bionic...

astrange · 2025-09-30T23:27:46 1759274866

> because anandtech is restructured now unfortunately

…because he left to work on the chips.

dagmx · 2025-10-01T00:23:27 1759278207

The changes to the site are very recent, and they continued doing stellar reports after he left too.

amelius · 2025-10-01T09:05:22 1759309522

and silenced by Apple, I guess.

criddell · 2025-09-30T19:25:51 1759260351

Right after the launch of the original iPhone, Apple bought P.A. Semi for $27 billion to work on chips for future iPhones.

colinprince · 2025-09-30T22:53:54 1759272834

actually, $278 million https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.A._Semi

criddell · 2025-10-01T13:13:33 1759324413

Oh right you are. I shouldn't trust my memory for trivia that old.

kridsdale1 · 2025-09-30T22:37:18 1759271838

A lot of those guys had a BBQ at my apartment complex for a celebration hosted by my roommate, who worked at Apple’s Silicon Team with them. Lots of cool things to talk to them about. This was around the time of the iPhone 7.

A huge number of them were Iranian.

robertjpayne · 2025-10-01T04:17:15 1759292235

This is the payoff of nearly over a decade of R&D being poured into their chip development.

Apple is a vertical integration company and the CPU/GPU in their devices was a clear sore spot of relying on external vendors they did not like.

You can see their lead continuing and growing with things like their new modem used in some iPhones