Samsung

Apple knows what it is doing in suing Samsung, right?

We hope so.

The soon to be biggest phone maker in the world, who has been making phones and patenting its technology since before Apple was making iPods, is suing Apple in the US after suing Apple abroad last week.  The move is in obvious response to Apple suing its biggest parts contractor for allegedly copying its iPhone and iPad designs with its Android phones and tablets. Samsung received the second-highest number of U.S. patents last year after International Business Machines Corp.

The lawsuit intensifies a legal dispute that began when Cupertino, California-based Apple sued Samsung earlier this month, claiming the Galaxy products “slavishly” copied iPad and iPhone technology and design. Samsung, which is also a supplier of some Apple chips, retaliated last week with lawsuits in Seoul, Tokyo and Mannheim, Germany.

In the U.S. complaint, Samsung accuses Apple of violating patents that “relate to fundamental innovations that increase mobile device reliability, efficiency, and quality, and improve user interface in mobile handsets and other products.”

The patented technology includes ways that a phone allows calls and Internet surfing at the same time; improvements in how text messages and attachments are sent; reductions in interference among mobile devices; and increases in the capacity of mobile networks, according to the complaint

Good times.

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Apple’s A5 chip has debuted with iPad 2, but the company’s already hard at work designing the A6, contemplating the A7 and thinking about the A8. Apple added more chip experts to their in-house silicon team and poached veteran engineers from Samsung and ARM earlier this month. A LinkedIn profile belonging to chip expert Eunseok Ji reveals he recently came on board as a senior Apple engineer, the role he played for years at rival Samsung. He counts advanced semiconductor skills in his profile, hard core stuff such as logic design, DFT, silicon testing and hands-on experiences on post-silicon bring-up and debugging of complex mixed-signal design for system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions.

Why antagonize your silicon manufacturer by poaching such an expert? Okay, Samsung is a frenemy. But why lure an engineer away from ARM? This fabless semiconductor firm makes designs that power Apple’s iOS gadgets and the vast majority of mobile gear, for that matter. ARM’s Steve Ravet, who also joined Apple in March as an SOC prototyping engineer, is a twelve-year veteran who worked as a system verification engineer at Compaq and verification engineer at International Meta Systems prior to joining ARM as an electrical engineer.

His competencies include CPU validation and design, focused on FPGA emulation, silicon and board bringup, top level simulation and debug for ARM microprocessor cores and SOCs. I’m just speculating here and your guess is as good as mine, but I think you’ll agree such a hiring spree might be a tell-tale sign of a greater number of unique hardware features in upcoming Apple gadgets. Look no further than Apple’s current lineup of iOS devices.

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Floorplan comparison: Apple’s A4 chip (left) and the latest A5 processor (right)

Reverse engineering wizards over at Chipworks put the A5 chip under a microscope. Yes, it’s a Samsung – confirming our hunch. The experts came to this conclusion by putting the chip under a microscope and examining dielectric layers and the shape of the transistor gates. The teardown analysis also revealed a die almost twice the size of the A4 chip from the previous-generation iPad and iPhone 4, the 45-nanometer manufacturing process and other interesting tidbits.

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Samsung seems to be emerging as a leading Apple competitor, with its A4-style processor-powered Galaxy smartphone and tablet devices — now news it intends introducing an Android OS-powered range of television sets, even as Apple seems to be foundering slightly with its Apple TV “hobby“.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPfCZC4VHnE&w=675&h=404]

Even as Compal Electronics chairman, Ray Chen, warns investors that the non-Apple tablet market ain’t worth playing in, A4 processor manufacturing partner, Samsung, has introdced its Galaxy Tab tablet device.
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