Erik Sherman writes about business and technology for such publications as Newsweek,
US News and Technology Review. Reach him at esherman@designchain.com.
Electronics Dewesign Chain Summer 2002
http://www.designchain.com/coverstory.asp?issue=summer02
Steve Jobs is recognizably the top cheerleader for Apple's products. And the inventor of
such hyperbole as "insanely great" has not abandoned that characteristic for the
company's iPod MP3 player.
"With iPod, Apple has invented a whole new category of digital music player that lets
you put your entire music collection in your pocket and listen to it wherever you go," the
Apple CEO said when he introduced the product in October 2001. "With iPod, listening
to music will never be the same again."
Although no one could accuse Apple, let alone Jobs, of being shy about product
promotion, it's a different story when it comes to its engineering and building processes.
The company has always been tighter lipped than the Pentagon when it comes to
releasing design chain details.
But that hasn't prevented some companies from satisfying their curiosity about what's
inside the advanced MP3 player. Some serious reverse engineering and discussion within
the electronics industry unearthed unusual details of Apple's development process.
It turns out that much of the underlying iPod design was performed by outside
companies. The Cupertino folk haven't given up on their heritage of design excellence—
they're just bowing to some inevitable directions in consumer electronics by borrowing
from established experts linked together for what may be the first design chain for the
iPod.
A Unique Design Chain Approach
Realizing that the MP3 market was still in its infancy, Apple developed a layered design
chain tuned for an early-stage market to create the iPod. Even more unusual for Apple, it
relied on a platform and reference design created by a third party, PortalPlayer, of Santa
Clara, Calif. Founded in 1999, PortalPlayer has a stellar cast of Silicon Valley executives
and investors, including renowned venture capitalist Gordon Campbell.
PortalPlayer had developed a base platform for a variety of audio systems, including
portable digital music devices, general audio systems and streaming audio receivers. It
appears that Apple picked PortalPlayer because its design expertise yielded the highest
quality of sound, according to industry sources.
Because of the unusually restrictive nondisclosure agreements in place among Apple,
PortalPlayer and other members of the sub-design chain, key officials were not able to
directly comment on their work with Apple. However, some members of the subchain
provided Electronics Design Chain Magazine with a glimpse inside the iPod core.
Once Apple and PortalPlayer became design chain partners, PortalPlayer then selected
other design chain members and managed the design process. Four key criteria were
behind the selection of other members of the design chain, none unusual for a consumer
electronics product:
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


highest quality sound
off-the-shelf components
cost
time to market
Under the Hood
The trail to find iPod's design chain starts with some reverse engineering of the device by
Portelligent Inc., an Austin, Texas, firm providing product and technology intelligence
for consumer electronics companies.
"First and foremost, the product was elegantly designed in classic Apple fashion," says
David Carey, president of Portelligent. "They did product design from the outside in."
Carey says the company had a vision of what the player should be and what it should
look like. The subsequent design parameters were dictated by its appearance and form
factor.
That outside-in perspective helped determine a number of the components, including the
planar lithium battery from Sony and the 1.8-inch Toshiba hard drive, which is the only
company presently manufacturing that form factor. The essential units—battery, hard
drive and circuit board—are layered, one atop the next.
"It was very thoughtful layering and nesting of the components mechanically," Carey
adds. "There's not a lot of unused volume inside [the iPod]."
The rest of the device uses a dedicated MP3 decoder and controller chip from
PortalPlayer, a Wolfson Microelectronics Ltd. stereo digital-to-analog converter, a flash
memory chip from Sharp Electronics Corp., a Texas Instruments 1394 firewire interface
controller, and a power management
and battery charging IC from Linear
Technologies Inc.
What Apple conspicuously did not do
is use an ASIC or other custom chip to
integrate all the functions it needed
onto one piece of silicon, which would
have presumably saved space and
battery life.
"Like with many of the systems being
done today, it has time-to-market and
issues," Carey notes. When a company
system-on-chip, "you run the risk of a
far cheaper to buy the best
risk-management
moves to a custom
design flaw, and it's
[components]."
PortalPlayer's vice president for marketing, Michael Maia, can't publicly disclose why
Apple and PortalPlayer decided not to use an ASIC or discuss other aspects of the iPod
design, but his description of a generic systems customer in the marketplace could be
considered applicable to Apple.
"There's a range of customers out there, from an OEM that does all its own design
internally to the right-hand side that do all their design through ODMs [original design
manufacturers] in Asia," Maia says. "There are guys in the middle who may specify the
product down to the semiconductor level and then have the ODM build it."
PortalPlayer decided to develop a reference model for a high-quality portable audio
player based on a standard product design strategy. It developed a series of designs that
enabled customization, and at the same time provided a stable environment, thereby
eliminating the need to start design from scratch.
PortalPlayer's Winning Relationships
Part of PortalPlayer's design chain strategy is to offer development tools as well as to
form relationships with third parties that offer other capabilities. The result is a series of
reference designs for different applications along with roadmaps for current and future
application capabilities.
"Customers can get access to that, and in that, we work very closely with select partners
that we have carefully chosen for a host of reasons," says Maia. "Wolfson [for example]
has what our minds and ears tell us are excellent quality codecs."
In addition, "Wolfson has excellent quality technology and a good price point," he notes.
As a result, PortalPlayer and Wolfson Microelectronics became design chain partners for
the audio player reference design.
The design process was a matter of a few months of
iterative loops. PortalPlayer would use the Wolfson
silicon in a prototype circuit, then go back to the
Edinburgh, United Kingdom, company with any
problems. "Once you've tried the device, we can
hone in on the issues," says Julian Hayes, vice
president of marketing at Wolfson. "We're fairly
expert at solving problems these days."
PortalPlayer selected Linear Technologies of New
York City for the power management because its
technology is leading edge and also because there
were preexisting ties between upper management of
the two companies.
But PortalPlayer had to develop a working relationship with TI, a competitor in other
areas, because Apple insisted that the Dallas-based company provide the 1394 chip.
The flash memory from Sharp, of Mahwah, N.J., shows a different relationship, as
PortalPlayer considers itself "agnostic" when it comes to memory chip vendors.
Risk Reduction
Using a platform like PortalPlayer's, in which systems are designed and chip designs
verified, offers fewer worries to a company that is in a rush to market. With the design
chain approach it has taken, Apple avoided the technical challenges of integrating DRAM
and logic processes.
"To do everything in one part is a complex, risky and potentially costly alternative to
integration of available components at the electronic assembly level," Carey says.
Certainly, custom work can offer cost reductions in large volume, but there are two
countering considerations for a company like Apple.
One would be volume, according to Mike Paxton, senior analyst of converging markets
and technologies at Scottsdale, Ariz.-based In-Stat/MDR.
"If you listen to Steve Jobs, he said they sold 125,000 in the fourth
quarter [of 2001], which is impressive," given that the iPod only
began to ship in October, Paxton says. By checking that figure
against discussions with component suppliers, he decided that it
was probably accurate. But while such sales, if kept constant for
an entire year, would make Apple the second- or third-largest MP3
player manufacturer worldwide, the volume is small compared to
more common uses of custom chips.
In addition, the IC costs for a device like the iPod won't dominate
Apple's bill of materials. Carey estimates that the hard drive is at
least 50 percent of the expense, so the advantage of bringing
design in house or working with a single chip vendor instead of a
more extensive design chain using a variety of outside suppliers is
reduced.
The other consideration is the typical trade-off when doing custom work: flexibility in
design and vendor selection versus the potentially low volumes and relatively high unit
prices.
All for One
Apple's design chain relied on off-the-shelf components integrated in an elegant way.
Even critical pieces such as the digital-to-analog converters (DAC) are off-the-shelf
discrete devices. The DAC "is a standard component that was designed for Wolfson for
portable music players," says Hayes. The Toshiba drive is another standard part.
"With iPod, Apple has invented a whole new category of digital music player
that lets you put your entire music collection in your pocket and listen to it
wherever you go." Steve Jobs, Apple Computer
Where the value rapidly accumulates is in the intelligent
coordination among the vendors and integration of their
products. The combination and linkage of the DAC to
other components is where the PortalPlayer-Wolfson
design chain provided real worth. "There's a lot of
embedded stuff" inside the design, says Hayes. "It has
some fairly complex DSP algorithms to enable the
features of the products that Apple may or may not be
taking advantage of."
Apple and PortalPlayer also relied on other key design
chain partners. While the Toshiba drive, for example, uses
a standard AT interface, the connector is a custom design.
And it appears Apple relied on Toshiba for guidance
about heat dissipation and shock tolerance.
The nondisclosure agreement between Apple and Toshiba
precludes the disk drive maker from describing its design
chain role. However, a source close to the design chain
says Toshiba did contribute to the overall design.
Don't Count Apple Out
It would be a huge mistake to assume that all the design work happened elsewhere and
that Apple had no substantial input. A reference design is far from having a finished
product, even electronically. The ultimate circuit design was still Apple's, as far as any
outsider can tell.
"The value is putting it all together and optimizing the design to eek out the best
performance, get the best power utilization, the best audio performance," says
Wolfson's Hayes. "That is not a trivial task by any means. Sometimes it's very difficult
in a cost constrained [situation] and small form factor to get the performance." Factors
that can influence the final sound can be the circuit board layout, the circuit design
itself, the handling of the power supply and the overall implementation.
"It's a combination of all those things that create that high-quality performance," Hayes
adds.
In his opinion, and in that of many reviewers, Apple hit a home run. "Certainly I think
it's about the best audio quality we've come across for that type of product in the
marketplace in terms of intrinsic audio quality and delivered audio quality," Hayes
says.
Then there is the user interface design, which has received strong reviews for the
implementation of a 1394 interface for music downloads so fast that it could make your
head spin. And it's easy to use.
"It's a fantastic user interface," emphasizes Hayes. "It's by far and away the best user
interface of any product of this type. It sets it apart from any of the other comparable
MP3 players of its ilk."
Choosing a development platform allowed Apple to focus on its true genius for form
factors and user interfaces. "Those two are Apple's strengths," says Vinay Asgekar,
director of research for semiconductor and high tech at Boston-based AMR Research.
"Apple knows how to make a high-tech product consumer friendly. That has been its
core strength from the introduction of the Apple Macintosh. That could be its strategy
for iPod."
Troubled Waters
With all the positives, is there a down side?
"Managing that activity [among multiple partners] becomes extremely difficult," says
Asgekar, as projects become harder to coordinate. "You have to make sure your
supplier's development and marketing roadmaps match up with your development and
marketing roadmaps."
While PortalPlayer's Maia is restricted from discussing how Apple managed its iPod
design chain, he was able to describe how systems houses in general work with the
audio subsection designer. A drawback for Apple, and other systems houses relying on
reference designs, is protection of its product and market space. When fundamental
parts of the design are done by others, there is an almost certainty that competitors will
eventually ship products using the same basic technology. Obviously, a company like
PortalPlayer makes the same silicon, firmware, tools and reference designs available to
many other companies.
While PortalPlayer provides designs on an exclusive basis for some customers, Maia
hints that the guts of the iPod may appear in other devices soon. So although Apple has
been the first of PortalPlayer's customers to ship products using the platform, many
more are slated to introduce their own offerings by this summer.
No doubt subsequent versions of the iPod will yield a revised design chain as different
components and optimizations are discovered and needed. But for now, Apple's first
design chain strategy and product have been a success.