Monday, February 28, 2011

What Can Apple iPad A5?

We talked a lot about ARM processors recently and showed that if Apple sells the A4 as "his" processor, we note that the chip is very similar to Samsung's Hummingbird - a few details - and that Korean society is in part the origin of the A4. And that's after it gets interesting ... Indeed, there are interesting things to analyze on the GPU.

On the CPU, it's pretty clear Apple will use an a priori Cortex A9 with two cores. The company has a priori not yet had the time nor the means to design an ARM core "house" and the Cortex A9 is the only logical solution, such as NVIDIA, and Texas Instruments ... Samsung. For the GPU, it is interesting to note that the beta versions of IOS indicate that Apple could use a GPU type PowerVR SGX543 MPx.

Currently, the firm uses a PowerVR SGX535 and move to the new version of the chip keeps optimizations already in place. The problem is that Samsung no longer uses a PowerVR GPU in its next ARM SoC, but a GPU ARM Mali-400 type. And so the GPU of the Apple "A5" will be interesting to explore is whether it is a Mali-400, it proves that Samsung is in large part to the origin of processors "Apple", if it is a PowerVR , this implies a design house.

Given its financial strength, Apple could become a major player in the SoC, why not with the final design its own chip, as Qualcomm or (eventually) NVIDIA ... It remains only to wait for March 2, release date of the iPad 2G.

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