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docdivakar
@RickMerritt: I found the link to a Samsung Galaxy teardown at the portal of EDN ...
docdivakar
@RickMerritt: would it be possible to do a similar teardown on Samsung's galaxy ...
Inside the iPad2 and the Apple A5
Rick Merritt
3/12/2011 2:29 PM EST
SAN JOSE, Calif. – Information on what's inside the Apple iPad2 is becoming available as teardown experts open up the first tablets going on sale. Here are some pictures and analysis from our sister division UBM TechInsights which is in the process of burrowing into the secrets of the system—including Apple's new A5 microprocessor.
There are major design wins for Qualcomm again with the MDM6600. Essentially Qualcomm has pushed Infineon--whose wireless properties now belong to Intel--right out of Apple’s flagship products.
"It makes you wonder if Intel might have buyer’s remorse considering they purchased Infineon while it had the iPhone and iPad design wins," said Allan Yogasingam, a technical marketing manager with TechInsights, a division of United Business Media, the publisher of EE Times.
The iPad2 had significant reuse from past products. "The wireless data card, for example, shows virtually 100 percent of the same components we found in the corresponding sockets of the Verizon iPhone 4," said Yogasingam.
The iPad2 communications board (below) includes the following chips:
--A Qualcomm PM8028 power management IC
--A Skyworks SKY77711-4 power amplifier module for CDMA/PCS
--A Skyworks SKY77710-4 power amplifier module for dual-mode CDMA/AMPS
--An Avago AFI05Z front end module
--A Toshiba Y9A0A111308LA memory package
--A Qualcomm MDM6600 multi-mode baseband supporting GSM/GPRS/EDGE, CDMA, HSDPA and HSPA+ as well as EV-DO
Click on image to enlarge.
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roncruiser
3/12/2011 4:06 PM EST
Good information.
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goafrit
3/13/2011 10:57 AM EDT
Nice reporting and excellent job. Apple is riding a great wave.
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GREAT-Terry
3/13/2011 11:34 AM EDT
Good report. I hope to see if there is any hint on what kind of processor the A5 is actually is. Will it be the similar ARM processor?
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rick.merritt
3/13/2011 11:44 AM EDT
Yes, I too am interested to know what ARM and graphics cores it uses and any other new blocks in the A5. Hopefully the analysts will kinow in a few days
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notnotme
3/14/2011 6:42 AM EDT
it is not ARM. Its PA Semi PowerPC which Apple acquired for $250 odd million.
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rick.merritt
3/14/2011 11:25 AM EDT
@notnotme: Apple did buy PA Semi apparently to gain microprocessor design expertise, but analysts have concluded Apple did NOT use its PowerPC based design. Instead they concluded Apple used a a Samsung Hummingbird core based on an ARM Cortex A8 core. See http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4200451/Apple-s-A4-dissected-discussed--and-tantalizing
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Don Scansen
3/14/2011 2:54 PM EDT
Rick,
Chipworks has posted a floorplan of the A5 showing the main IP blocks.
http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/technology-blog/2011/03/apple-a5-vs-a4-floorplan-comparison/
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Frank Eory
3/14/2011 3:48 PM EDT
Thanks for posting this link. If I'm not mistaken, the upgrade from one Cortex A8 to two A9 cores was pretty much expected, as was the Imagination Technologies GPU.
As the chipworks blog writer said, "quite a lot of horsepower!"
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DestroCom
3/15/2011 6:20 PM EDT
What's interesting though is that no one has identified which ARM cores the A5 is using. Is it A8 or A9? that floorplan doesn't tell us.
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Allan_Editor
3/15/2011 6:32 PM EDT
@DestroCom and @Frank Eory
IOSnoops claims that the A5 is using two A9 cores thru software reverse-engineering. TechInsights has done the same floorplan analysis on the A5 but further research is required before we can definitively say that the cores are indeed ARM Cortex A9. It proves a little more difficult in the flexibility of design that comes from selecting these cores.
We do know it's not the ARM A8 though in dual use. We would be able to see that quickly considering it is the same 45nm process from Samsung that was applied to A5 that was on the A4.
That core was also seen in the Hummingbird:
http://www.ubmtechinsights.com/uploadedFiles/Public_Website/Content_-_Primary/Investigative_Analysis/2011/Five_Top_Trends_in_the_Mobile_Industry_for_2011/Apple%20A4%20vs%20SEC%20S5PC110A01-%20update.pdf
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elctrnx_lyf
3/14/2011 3:03 PM EDT
Infineon not in the ipad is really a bad news for intel considering the huge volumes of the apple products. quallcom is doing great by taking center stage in latest iphone and ipad2.
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tech13
3/14/2011 4:04 PM EDT
Skyworks has many nice wins...
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selinz
3/14/2011 9:40 PM EDT
Overall, it's an iphone with a big display and 3 batteries... Nothing too spectacular beyond that (which is spectacular enough in its own right!)
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ATUL SRIVASTAVA
3/15/2011 2:15 AM EDT
The differentiation in this business (xPad) will come from Software , Display Quality and overall power consumption .SoCs from different vendors all using similar ARM core will be only relevant from power consumption point of view as all of them will have more processing power than what any xPad will need.
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Patk0317
3/21/2011 1:42 AM EDT
Good info. Now how does it compare with the new Android and Palm based tablets arriving in the marketplace?
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docdivakar
3/21/2011 6:01 PM EDT
@RickMerritt: would it be possible to do a similar teardown on Samsung's galaxy tabs?
Also, the package-on-package (PoP) in A4 was functionally mapped into a lateral design in A5 with much more functionality. It would nice to explore if some functions can be moved to a vertical substrate via 3D TSV's in A5 and further shrink the floor space? My hunch is some one at Apple is working along that line of thought...
MP Divakar
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docdivakar
3/22/2011 3:06 PM EDT
@RickMerritt: I found the link to a Samsung Galaxy teardown at the portal of EDN (a sister publication of EE Times):
Samsung Galaxy Tab tablet teardown:
http://www.edn.com/blog/Anablog/40609-Videos_of_the_Samsung_Galaxy_Tab_tablet_teardown.php
Unfortunately it is a collection of videos and leaves a lot to be desired. So it is still worthwhile to get snapshots of the the teardown along with technical descriptions. Thanx.
MP Divakar
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