How many ARM cores does it take to make an iPhone?

By Peter Clarke, pldesignline.com
January 12, 2007

LONDON — There has been much speculation about whose chips are designed into the Apple iPhone, the mobile gadget launched by Apple this week. But it should be remembered that modern system design is also about the cores inside the chips.

And when it is about the intellectual property the chip is sometimes just the "dongle" added to the IP to stop the customer ripping the IP provider off — and to help the customer connect one lot of valuable IP to other lot of IP in their system.

According to a report from FBR Research, the iPhone winners include Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (applications/video processor), Marvell Technology Group Ltd. (802.11), Infineon Technologies AG (baseband), Broadcom Corp. (touch screen controller), and CSR plc (Bluetooth) among others.