Apple iPad biggest news is Apple A4 chip. Now they fully control supply chain

As far as I know, they aren't making screens, batteries, memory, and lots of other components, so they are yet to fully control the supply chain, but they are one step closer.<p>However, I wonder how the business scale of building their own processors is going to work for the. Will the A4 move into the iPhone products? If the iPad isn't a huge success, that processor is going to cost them more than having bought from a chip supplier.<p>What tech does the new processor really bring?

Fully control the supply chain? Please don't editorialize like that.

As a circuit designer, I find it really surprising that Apple has rolled their own processor for the iPad. We finally confirm why Apple bought PA Semi. But it also says a lot about Apple and the processor industry:<p>* Apple predicts that sales will be high enough to justify building an iPad-specific processor. I assume nobody outside of Apple will get to use the A4 or derivative chips.<p>* Apple feels that there was no external vendor that could cost-effectively get the exact power-performance trade-off they wanted for the suite of applications that they want to optimize.<p>* Tempering the previous point, this may be a net loss in the case of the iPad alone in terms of pure costs versus going with an external vendor, BUT they now have much better negotiating power for all their other processor purchases from Intel, Samsung, ARM, etc. They can always threaten to roll their own. So even if they lose some money on the A4, they may be in a better position overall<p>* EDIT: Let me also add that despite what some people are claiming this is likely NOT an ARM, but based on PA Semi's power-efficient flavor of the Power architecture. I believe the Power architecture is in the same family as the Motorola PowerPCs that Apple formerly used and dumped for Intel because of the PowerPC's lower power-efficiency.

The price is tempting. But I don't like the mindset of bigger ipod touch (app store and the closed OS).

This makes Apple the new Commodore.<p>(Commodore really took off when they acquired MOS Technology. It enabled them to develop the custom silicon they needed to make the VIC, 64, and Amiga world-class game-changing machines.)

I agree that the A4 chip is interesting. But to me the biggest news is that Apple is supplying the iPad with 3g access and an unlocked SIM. Not that the majority of people will buy an iPad, but they are preempting what I think we'll see in the future with data connectivity, namely that we'll pay a monthly subscription for wireless connectivity the same way many people now pay for cell phones instead of landlines. We'll expect a carrier of choice and we'll expect the service to be available almost everywhere and on almost every device.

So, what does this chip do that, say, a Snapdragon doesn't?

True. Now we can start a countdown until they move their proprietary chip into the iPhone.

What's the A4? Probably some ARM variant design, right?

I wonder what the 4 stands for? Was there an A1, A2, A3?