Apple creates own CPU to power iPad
According to iFixit, "this particular chip came into existence in Week 40 of 2009, which happens to be end of September / early October."
Called the Apple A4, Steve Jobs referred to it only briefly in yesterday’s keynote speech, confirming it was clocked at a nice, round 1GHz and that the A4 is a system-on-a-chip with a CPU, GPU, I/0 and memory controller. A picture of the chip appears in Apple’s video for the iPad, and iFixit – the firm responsible for the teardowns you see of new gadgets – has some slivers of information on it, and a nice HD still.
Apple all but announced its intention to create its own chips when it purchased P.A. Semi in April 2008 and then became an ARM licensee. P.A. Semi was known for producing low power chips based on the Power Architecture (which has found its way into many devices, including the PPE part of the PS3’s Cell CPU). In addition to P.A. Semi, Apple also hired Bob Drebin who was the Chief Technology Officer of AMD and ATI’s Graphics Products Group.
It seems unlikely that Apple has invented something completely new with the A4, and while P.A. Semi’s experience was with the Power architecture, the iPhone, with which the iPad has much in common, uses an ARM CPU. It’s likely then that the A4 uses an ARM core – rumours reported by Bright Side of News and iFixit suggest that it’s the Cortex-A9 MPCore. This is the same ARM core used by Nvidia in its upcoming Tegra 2 SOC design (and it means our guess on Twitter that the iPad would be Tegra 2 powered is pretty close!) Little is known about the A4’s graphics, although as with the iPhone 3G and 3GS, it will be compliant with Open GL ES.
At 1GHz, the A4 is 400MHz faster than the ARM CPU in the iPhone 3GS, so it’s perhaps not surprising that videos of the iPad in action show an interface that’s snappy and apps that are quick and responsive.
Obviously there are still many questions to answer about the A4, but its appearance in a device aimed at the heart of the netbook market – currently dominated by the Atom CPU – is sure to make Intel feel nervous. Are you happy Apple is now in the chip business? Or should it have gone with x86? Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyI think initial sales will be good but as soon as people start to realise its no more than a Larger IPhone with no capability for word processing / excel / other real work activities then sales will start to drop to something that has a keyboard attached
As for Apple making processors, I think they're rather late to the party really. If they'd bought a licence to continue development of the 68x series processors then yeah, but this far down the line it requires a massive investment to be able to take it forward & no, I don't think Intel will be nervous about this at all - more likely they will respond with a tie-in involving HP or Dell, with a Tablet PC derivative running on Windows 7 (which also already supports multitouch). Good battle, but I think Wintel will ultimately win this one. If Apple had gone with a device about 40-50% smaller, different story, but you can't put this in your pocket and you cant balance it & read comfortably on your lap or on a desk so won't compete with either their own iphone or the netbook properly.
Doesn't it come with some kind of iWork with these capabilities?
It make sense for them to ship their own chip I think. Presumably they have forecast selling a considerable number of these so why keep themselves beholden to someone else's silicon? Personally though I remain pretty skeptical about this one... time will tell. Let's see what the competition can offer first.
Just for that reason, I think the average iPod owner who is interested in books will probably buy one, or the people who just blindly bought an iPhone because it was by apple, will probably buy one too (if they have the funds).
Shame I can't think of anything to do with it that i couldn't already have done on my psp.
If that's in response to me, I said 68x, not x86. Something of a typo, I mean the motorola 680x0 processors that the macs originally ran on. Like I say, they've entered that part of the industry far too late to offer any real threat to Intel.
I won't buy one, no matter how well it does what it's supposed to do. I'd rather not have Apple telling me what I can and can't do with my own computer, thank you very much.
The chip and the way it is created is only an issue if you need that extra freedom. Me and the wife have that extra freedom on our other gadgets. This will be purely for social, convenience and 'some' business use.
as for the Apple A4 processor, i think the rumours on ARM's IP Cortex-A9 or A8 are very accurate. there is no reason for them to port the iPhone OS to Power architecture if they can simply use ARM's IP.
what people usually don't understand is that ARM doesn't really make the processors, they make the intellectual properties which they take a share in every product sold with its IP. so even if the silicon is made by PA Semi, it doesn't make any difference if it's made by Samsung or Intel's fab.
also, Apple's keynote, Jobs said creating their own processor allowed them to do all kind of optimisations. i call bullcrap, unless they make the processor from instruction level, there is not much to optimise. all they've done is to cut down cost by creating a device specific SoC solution.
I'd rather have Eee touch. $450 for 8.9" touch screen, full keyboard (eee size :(), 1 GB ram, 16GB SSD (with a free 16GB SD card and 20 GB online storage)
Assuming of course Intel would grant them a licence, as I believe if you want to make an x86 CPU you have to get a licence from Intel
which i am thinking it's using the same graphics processor as 3GS? not Tegra?
Worse though. the more I read, see and hear about this thing, the more I think it will fail.
Locked OS?
What are they thinking, they have created the old Apple commercial... A bunch of drones.
Sorry, but look at the issues with locked Iphones and apps that has already going on. Do you really want your entire computer like that? A phone will at least work as a phone, but given Apple's penchant for just dropping support for old hardware, what happens if in 2 years they do an update on this thing and decide no more support?
Edit:
This is perfect...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4&feature=player_embedded#
I must have had my head in the sand, what's been going on?