Silicon Speculators

From the New York Times article on Apple’s A4 processor:

“I don’t see anything that looks that compelling,” said Linley Gwennap, a chip analyst at the Linley Group. “It doesn’t seem like something all that new, and, if it is, they are not getting far with it.”

I don’t understand how Gwennap can back up his claim. I find it hard to believe the Linley Group has any more information about the A4 than anyone else outside Apple’s hardware division. Apple is unlikely ever to release detailed specs. Wikipedia doesn’t say much more than it “runs at 1 GHz and has an integrated graphics processor.” We know Samsung manufactures it. We know Apple licensed technology from ARM. That’s about it.

What strikes me as journalistic negligence is that the Times fails to tell us the analysts they quote have no hard data on the chip, its fabrication process, or technical capabilities. The Linley Group certainly didn’t do a tear-down of an actual chip. And without seeing benchmarks or other performance metrics, how can Gwennap say he doesn’t “see anything that looks compelling”? Admittedly, an analyst with 15 years of industry experience can make some fairly educated guesses about what’s going on under the hood, but in the end it’s just speculation.