Venture Beat claims a “very trusted” source has informed them that Apple’s PA Semi team might not have been behind the new iPad’s Apple A4 chipset:
PA Semi didn’t do the A4. It was the existing VLSI team. Apple has made custom chips for years like the Northbridges for G4 and G5.
This information was appended to an article that focused on how great, and power-efficient, PA Semi’s chip design really was. So why wouldn’t Apple use them? Gizmodo speculates:
there likely isn’t a whole lot “custom” going in the A4’s actual design, which by all appearances is an ARM Cortex A9 wrapped up with a PowerVR graphics core and some other parts in a custom SoC. So, new question, if it’s true: What’s PA Semi, which Apple said would be working on chips for iPhones actually working on? A more customized chip would be interesting, since PA Semi’s true talent was in designing chips with ridiculous power efficiencies.
So, we won’t see PA Semi until… Apple A5?
Apple iPad A4 Chip Designed by PA Semi Team… or Not? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
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According to Bright Side of the News, it turns out that newly spun Apple A4 system-on-a-chip that debuted alongside the iPad does indeed pack more punch than the Sammy in the iPhone 3GS:
A4 is a System-on-a-Chip, or SOC, that integrates the main processor [ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore i.e. Multi-Processing Core, identical to ones used in nVidia Tegra and Qualcomm Snapdragon] with graphics silicon [ARM Mali 50-Series GPU], and other functions like the memory controller on one piece of silicon – not unlike what Intel is trying to achieve with its future “Moorestown” Atom processor that debuted inside LG’s Smartphone
Cortex A9 indeed? But no PowerVR SGX like the iPhone. Engadget says this is also similar to the Tegra2 platform. So, it’s more of an Apple assemblage of ARM components rather than anything PA Semi unique, but is it a first step towards more customized silicon? Either way, we’d still love to see this baby powering the 4th gen iPhone and iPod touch.
Still no word on RAM though…
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Apple A4 iPad Chipset = ARM Multicore Cortex A9 + Mali 50 GPU
During ARM’s Q3 financial results announced today, 9to5Mac noticed this little gem:
including a license for ARM’s 2GHz implementation of a dual core Cortex-A9 processor.
We’ve heard about the Cortex A9 before. Purportedly, is 5x faster than an intel Atom, yet uses the same amount of power in a 60% smaller package.
Could this be [...]
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Could 2GHz ARM Cortex A9 Chip be Future iPhone/iTablet Bound?
Apple Insider reports that Samsung has a 45 nanometer, 1GHz ARM processor, code-named “Hummingbird” on the horizon.
It uses the same Cortex A8 architecture as the current iPhone 3GS (which runs at a clocked-down 600MHz) but due to the smaller size, is said to not consumer any more power or generate any more heat than the current 833MHz generation.
Apple has made huge investments and agreed to large scale licenses of the ARM chip, even as they’re moving ahead with their own, in-Apple chipset initiatives.
So, even if Samsung ships this baby in time there’s still no telling if Apple will use it for a forth generation iPhone, likely to cycle around June 2010.
Still… Zoom. Zoom.
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1GHz ARM Mobile CPU on the Horizon — but is it iPhone Bound?
Following up on rumors of a $800 Apple netbook, MacBook, iTablet, etc. VentureBeat reports that Apple might also use the new platform to introduce their long-rumored custom system-on-a-chip.
This would be the result of Apple purchasing fabless chip design firm Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semi) and hiring Papermaster from IBM and graphics processor (GPU) gurus x2 from AMD/ATI (though whether or not it includes the ARM and PowerVR licenses for cores found in the iPhone and iPod touch, or beefier Intel chips found in the Mac line is uncertain).
While Steve Jobs said PA Semi was going to be used for iPods and iPhones, VentureBeat claims the team was actually split in two, half for iPod/iPhone and half for the tablet.
TUAW speculates that, given recent news of problems between Apple and Nvidia, who currently makes the Mac integrated chipsets, perhaps Apple will push the custom work into that line as well.
Either way, we’ve seen the huge benefit shared software technology has provided for the iPhone and Mac (Spotlight, QuickTime X to name but two), Apple going in-house with the chipsets could be just as beneficial…
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Rumor: $800 iTablet to Use Custom Apple Chipset?
MacRumors is reporting that Apple’s new iPhone 3GS, while indeed using Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR graphics core, may just have a little more under the hood than previously thought:
iPhone developers, however, have discovered that the iPhone 3GS has extension files named “IMGSGX535GLDriver” suggesting that the new iPhone uses the more powerful graphics processor intended for “high end” mobile devices. This may not be entirely conclusive evidence by itself but it is consistent with a report from a Anandtech commenter who claims to have heard directly from Apple engineers at WWDC that the iPhone 3GS does indeed use the SGX 535.
Zoom. Zoom.
In a related story, Apple has apparently raised their stakes in Imagination Technologies to 9.5% on the heels of Intel’s 16%.
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iPhone 3GS Graphics Even More Powerful than Imagined?
