Sometimes the Claim Chowder Cooks Quickly

Dylan Patel posted this piece on his SemiAnalysis site two months ago, just after Apple’s iPhone 13 event. The headline, to say the least, was eye-catching: “Apple CPU Gains Grind to a Halt and the Future Looks Dim as the Impact From the CPU Engineer Exodus to Nuvia and Rivos Starts to Bleed In”.

His post garnered a lot of attention, and set a pessimistic first impression regarding the A15 Bionic SoC. But Patel’s speculation — based on Apple’s sparse performance information during the keynote — didn’t pan out when reviewers actually got the iPhones 13 into their hands. And it looks even worse now that the M1 Pro and Max are out. And we still haven’t seen Apple’s pro desktop silicon.

Is brain drain going to be a problem for Apple’s silicon efforts years down the road? Could be! But retention of talent across the entire company has long been Apple’s number one concern.

★ Saturday, 6 November 2021