Design Article
Analysis gives first look inside Apple's A4 processor
Young Choi, UBM TechInsights
5/10/2010 8:00 PM EDT
OTTAWA — The entire world is fascinated, again, by the latest mobile gadget from Apple, the iPad. Speculation and rumors about the Apple A4 applications processor inside the iPad abound.
UBM TechInsights has analyzed the iPad and the A4 to establish some facts about the product and the processor. (UBM TechInsights is a division of United Business Media, the publisher of EE Times.)
We've conducted product teardowns, detailed process technology and functional layout analyses, functional testing, and power consumption measurements of the iPad. Our library of analysis of Apple’s products stretching back to the original iPhone enabled us to arrive at some concrete conclusions regarding the technology, power consumption and processor characteristics of this important element of Apple’s latest product.
To help understand Apple’s efforts in applications processors, it is useful to look at the history of Apple’s applications processors from the original iPhone introduced in 2007 to the latest iPad.
Apple has been introducing two new mobile products per year (see Figure 1). Apple introduces iPod Touch and iPhone products in alternating fashion: iPhone –> iPod Touch (first generation) –> iPhone 3G –> iPod Touch (second generation) -> iPhone 3GS -> iPod Touch (third generation) -> iPad.
|
|
|
|
|
craigth
5/7/2010 6:24 PM EDT
What would really be a great compliment to this analysis articel is to investigate and report what EDA design tools were used to design the chips.
Sign in to Reply
SL325
5/8/2010 1:25 AM EDT
I think they are 3D multi chip modules so that is probably the size of the DRAM integrated into the package
Sign in to Reply
CharlieCL
5/8/2010 8:51 AM EDT
Looks no performance advance in A4. What is the magic of 10 hours running time?
Sign in to Reply
rick.merritt
5/8/2010 12:19 PM EDT
What's I'd love to see is more comparisons between the capabilities of the A4 and other similar generation ARM mobile processors like the Qualcomm Snapdragon, Nvidia Tegra 1/2 and TI OMAP 3/4.
Sign in to Reply
luting
5/10/2010 11:18 AM EDT
Is this really Apple own design or Samsung chip with Apple logo on it?
Sign in to Reply
EET Administrator
5/11/2010 7:33 PM EDT
test
Sign in to Reply
sglass68
6/1/2010 6:05 AM EDT
Hi,
I think your Dhrystone numbers are out by a factor of 1000. ARM's Cortex-A8 is 2 DMIPS / MHz, not 2000.
Regards,
Simon
Sign in to Reply