Jobs is gone now and Apple lost all its recent lawsuits against Samsung concerning look and feel of various products.
Up until today, the two companies still did business together because Samsung had state of the art 20nm lines that were built specifically to support Apple's custom chip designs. Samsung built a good percentage of Apple's chips for them, and they got along together in a disfunctional family type relationship.
Apple however is escallating the war against Samsung by very publically firing them yesterday. "What for", you say, with only mild curiousity. Why for screwing up the Exynos 5410 Octa and showing "mediocrity in design" says Apple. Can't trust that Samsung not to screw the pooch again if we let them make our laptop 64 bit chipset.
BTW, Apple never used the 5410 chipset in anything, nor did they ever plan to.
Apple has made them a good PR move in this that is ringing strongly throughout Apple space, branding Samsung with the mediocrity branding iron and slapping the South Korean giant very publically in the face for an ARM/Samsung early move into Octa space that was done before ARM had finished cooking up the necessary big/Little task switching software and getting it actually into the Android Linux kernel.
And the charge is true, BTW. Kit Kat (or key lime pie if you prefer) is going to finally release all the code necessary to fully support the big Samsung chipsets (5410 and 5420 although 5410 is likely never going to be able to use the new code because of early version buggy hardware that it was built with).
This ARM development bobble was actually Apple's fault at the root since they were the ones who forced ARM to push out the A53/A57 abruptly a year early, totally disrupting the flow of A7/A15 implementation which should have had an extra year to phase in, but didn't get that year.
Apple's pressure (they own 33% of ARM after all) also resulted in the exit of several smaller ARM vendors who threw in their towels at the money and time that was going to be required to keep up with this abrupt jump step.
HOWEVER, it is all done now. Samsung was the ARM partner on Octa core implementation and
it was Samsung's choice to push out the 5410 as soon as they could to re-coop some of that development money and "be the first one".
Samsung has paid millions in lost sales for that bad decision and will pay out technically hundreds of millions for the whole lost Apple production season that Apple just yanked. Samsung has lost face, too -- big time. And to Samsung, that hurts worse than the money.
Jumping the gun is VERY VERY costly in phone space ....
So, what has Apple actually done? Their disfunctional relationship with Samsung has escallated into a Hatfield / McCoy level of abrupt rifle fire. Samsung is sitting on 20nm production lines with nothing to do on them.
Samsung is moving their own 64 bit chipset into production
just as soon as the ARM hard macro design gets finalized (and ARM had better not frick it up in any of the fine details as they are the ones who GUARANTEE that design to work as stated).
ARM is getting TONS of heat from all their partners right now, all of who know the true story behind the jump step into A53-A57 and the 5410 debacle and all of whom are clamoring to go 64 bit right now because of Intel's Bay Trail and the well known way the final end customers react to a 32-64 bit change over period.
Look to see a lot of ARM 64 bit hard macro designs pop out next year as it is all the little guys can get done that fast (and after Samsung's burn job, they sorta want that ARM hard macro Guarantee to back their play).
Linaro and the Linux kernel guys state that the software "state of the art" that has been developed is in the kernel right now. Google is releasing it with Kit Kat. This is true, but it doesn't mean anything but what it says.
If there was ever a big bobble opportunity time for Intel to get back in the game, it happens early next year --- IF somebody leaves something out (or even just lacking a bit) in the first 64 bit ARM implementation wave then Intel will be there to pick up the fumbled ball.
The odds of ARM and its partners getting everything "stone perfect" on a one year too early 64 bit rush job that Apple has handed them is a bit of a stretch job.
Remember, Samsung put out the 5410 at the state of the art at the time they put it out there -- the hard fact was that the state of the art from ARM simply wasn't cooked fully yet and the chip did NOT perform as expected by customers or as advertised by ARM (or Samsung). ARM had a channel switching bug that dumped the cache at a big/LITTLE change over -- and this bug was hard wired into the 5410's hardware, not the software. This was ARM's error.
5410 was a flop when the bug went public, and
every smaller vendor who had tried to use it took it in the throat. ARM defends themselves by saying it did what they said it would do at the time (and this is mostly true) and if folks applied the claims for the full implementation to that early on 5410 implementation that isn't ARM's fault (yes it is, you were stupid to let Samsung go forward with a early form of big/Little task switching -- you sold them the design and the software to do that, dammit. And you were the one who foolishly advertised/touted
the full end result levels, not the first interim step where you were at in reality. And that switching bug was in ARM's hardware design, not the software.
The 5410's switching bug can't be fixed by a software update .....)
Samsung is a prideful South Korean company -- right now they are like a tiger that has been slapped in the face by a porcupine's back and forth slap.
They have lots of 20nm production capacity now all of a sudden and when ARM comes through with a hard macro that suits their lines perfectly and has been run tested on their lines with a full production run and is COMPLETELY UNDERSTOOD then advertising claims that match that reality EXACTLY will be dispersed to match what the really IS right now.
Trusting a 33% Apple owned (and actively manipulated in the past by Apple) company called ARM Holding, Inc. to give you a totally flaw free design isn't going to be that easy out into the future. Samsung isn't going to be caught out again by that mistake, and will only produce what ARM totally guarantees will work perfectly (and what they have tested out on their own production lines).
ARM owes Samsung bigtime for this past frick up, so I suspect you will see Samsung be given the very best of 64 bit ARM core designs, including the very best Mali graphics cores and the largest internal cache memories, battery management, etc.
ARM has got to redeem itself. This means NOT ALLOWING Apple to influence them again, ever, and
never releasing stuff that isn't full cooked, fully softwared and fully tested.
Samsung will fire the big/little 8 core big cannon again this spring, in ANGER this time, fully intending to blow Apple completely out of the water. "Enraged tiger" mode is good motivation for abrupt progress, after all.
ARM's very best designs are going up against Apple's designs and Qualcomm's best designs head to head, with power, battery life and functional graphics and overall everything.
It is throw down time again in phone/tablet space.
Intel is out there now, waiting for the ball to be dropped by any of the 3 parties. Intel is back to their habit of following up close behind Apple's curly tail, sniffing at Apple's tablet and laptop processor business as Apple has no big chip in the pipeline to do that business after next year, especially since they have started up a face slapping rifle shootin' feud with Samsung.
Man, this stuff MOVES fast, don't it? Somewhat entertaining, yup, that it is ....
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