Ever so gently, we're starting to
peel away the layers of mystery surrounding the A4 system-on-chip that powers Apple's fancy new slate device.
iFixit, helped by reverse engineering firm
Chipworks, have gone to the trouble of both dissecting
and X-raying the iPad's central processing hub in their quest to lift the veil of ignorance. Their findings confirmed that the A4 is built using a "package on package" method, meaning that the 256MB of Samsung-provided SDRAM is stacked immediately atop the CPU, which is noted as being reductive to both latency and energy use. With a single core processor inside, the
iFixit team concluded the iPad had to be running on
a Cortex A8 -- which is very much the
likeliest choice at this point -- but their assertion that it
couldn't be a
Cortex A9 MPCore inside is inaccurate, as those chips also come in single-core options. Either way, it'll be interesting to see how it stacks up against
Samsung's Hummingbird chip, which was designed by Intrinsity, the same company Apple is being rumored to have
recently acquired. Finally, the visual inspection of the iPad's mobo puts a model number to the already known
PowerVR GPU, narrowing it down to the SGX 535, while also naming and picturing a number of other exciting components, such as the always popular capacitive touchscreen controller. Hit the source link below for all the lurid images.
posted April 6th 2010 5:04AM
@mtnDewFTW
I'm pretty sure they explained ample times how to not get ipad news if you aren't interested in the big iPhone that can't make phone calls or fit in your pocket.
@mkhpalm oh I know that, but I actually wanna get the Apple news.
I just don't get why everyone is so obsessed with the iPad, and yet they all hate it.
It's like they have to review something every single day that they claim nobody likes.
Most people just hate on the news anyway, so why bother?
@mtnDewFTW Can you exclude iPad news and then not Apple then? It takes longer to click on a link and complain about the link existing than just ignoring the link in the first place?
@mkhpalm yeah, it's just a big iPhone, which is just a small computer which brings us to it's just a big small computer, which is just like saying it's a computer. Yes, we know that.
Dissection is verification of what we knew all along... its a gigantic iPhone.
Its a single core ARM A8 chip w/ a powerVR 535 GPU, just like the iPhone, just higher clocked.
IOW if you essentially want a smartphone with a huge battery and huge screen, buy an iPad.
@Ducman69
I wonder if they new IPhones will be released at a lower price, as R&D would be less.
Looks like a pistol from the future.
@Ducman69
Except an iPhone can make phone calls and fits in your pocket.
@Ducman69
Dont forget the same RAM as the 3GS too.
The 3GS is just running at a lower clock speed.
In other words, the iPad is officially a bigger iPhone.
@Ducman69 Does it really matter? The real-life performance and software are much more important. Just look on the JooJoo, probably stronger CPU, more RAM etc. - despite that the software still works like shit.
Apple just shows us that specs aren't everything, according to all reviews it's lighting fast - isn't that enough?
Here's what I don't understand. Chipworks does not say what kind of CPU yet and it says:
1 Gb mobile DDR SDRAM (x2)
K4X1G323PE x2
So that will be 2GB (1GB x 2) Where did 256MB came from?
Which one is it?
@mkhpalm and has a camera
@staticjethro
I forgot the source
http://www.chipworks.com/iPad_teardown2.aspx
@Ducman69 Just that it is a gigantic smartphone without the phone and camera. Doesnt really make it any better.
@Edmunn +1
Made my morning :D
@staticjethro they mean 2gbit, divide that by 8 and you get the 256megabyte they are talking about
@staticjethro
OK got it. It's 1Gigabit = 128MB x2 = 256MB. LOL
How does it runs so fluid? Oh my Oh my!
@staticjethro (stupid engadget comment system)
2gigabit divided by 8 are 256megybyte
@staticjethro 1 Byte (capital "B") = 8 bits. 2Gb (note the "b") = 256MB
@Xstream arg i hate it when my posts are not coming through and then i post again and they suddenly show up
OMFG! iPad will crawl to it's knees on 3D framerate test.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/15/iphone-3gs-pitted-against-nexus-one-in-3d-frame-rate-test-video/
Imagine 1024x768 resolution on that
@Edmunn
..coming down to shoot Android.
For all the hype, this chip seems pretty generic
@Jakob
My calculator works like a charm too! Except that it doesn't do much more complex tasks. Apple products always work like a charm. Except that some of them may not have many features to brag about. iPad is for someone who wished iPhone had a gigantic screen. Not much of an extra capability. Check out the Notion Inc Adam. I doubt that it will succeed so much as it is a new brand and it doesn't have fanboys. But who says # of buyers reflect how good a product is? Afterall, 70% of the iPod buyers think it is the best mp3 player. Probably they never tried Sony Walkman S, X or Cowon S9 sound quality!
@krishansy
Sorry for my abysmal English Grammar and my nonsensical use of idioms. "should be as much as" and many more corrections.
@abedinthehouse Was it not 512MB of ram?
@Ducman69 Mistake in article:
"but their assertion that it couldn't be a Cortex A9 MPCore inside is inaccurate, as those chips also come in single-core options"
Yeah but they aren't called MPCore for obvious reasons. From the ARM site:
"The Cortex-A9 microarchitecture is delivered within either a scalable multicore processor, the Cortex-A9 MPCore™ multicore processor, or as a more traditional processor, the Cortex-A9 single core processor."
In other words if it has one core, it can't be the Cortex A9 MPCore. Why am I having to explain this to tech journalists?
Also, no matter how you X-Ray it, 256MB RAM sucks. iPad is fast because it runs one app at a time with a fast CPU. That's not what RAM is for. RAM is to store the data of multiple apps at once and when it runs out, then you have problems.
iPad = iPod Pro
@TinWard I'm not really too happy that it only has 256MB of RAM, but i'm also pretty familiar with what the 3gs is capable of with the same specs.....having it jailbroken and running the pre style app switcher on it, i was able to run upwards of 15 apps in the background without any really noticeable lag. so please explain your assumption that an ipad would choke on multiple apps running at once.
obviously the specs don't always tell the whole story. hell, my 3gs seems to be able to run more applications without diminished performance than my N1 with the desire rom running....and they seem pretty even when i'm running stock android...but the N1 has twice the RAM.
when i say this, i don't mean that one is better than the other....but it would appear that iphoneOS is leaps and bounds ahead of android in terms of how optimized and streamlined it is.
I'm honestly a novice at all of this, so everything i say comes from a place of curiosity. how is it that the ipad i've played around with in the apple store seems much much faster than my N1 with all but one task killed, despite its inferior specs
@ummmwhat Well said.
In a nutshell, as long as you don't expect more performance from the iPad than you do from an iPod, there won't be any surprises.
Just do not expect to use the extra screen size for multitasking, anything more than cellphone class mini-games, or fullsize applications as this hardware simply cannot handle it.
@Ducman69 good one......
how about mobile class games.....since....well.....its a mobile device.
btw, as an iphone and android user, lets not get into the debate about which platform offers more robust applications.....the only useful apps i've found on android market are the same sort of tweaks (which require root access) i get from cydia for my iphone.....but in terms of apps that actually deliver some sort of product or enjoyable experience, the iphone makes android look like its still in beta.
yes i understand that there is no point in comparing ipad apps with desktop OS type applications, but this thing isn't meant to be a laptop replacement.....anyone who says otherwise is an idiot....and to be honest, the majority of the people i see using this horrible logic have been ipad detractors using it as a basis for their hate.
have you actually used an iPad....i would guess that you haven't......are you also a marketing genius that has always been dead on with what consumers want and what products meet those wants the best?(not a reference to jobs before people try to jump down my throat) i would guess not.
@Ducman69
I'm pretty sure the 3GS has a PowerVR SGX 520, instead of 535, the latter being significantly faster. Also, the fact that both are Cortex A8 cores says little about the CPU performance, since this is a new implementation of that design that's possibly faster and more efficient.
Also, why does everyone say "it's just a big iPhone" as if that's a bad thing? As if the iPhone and the whole iPhone OS platform created itself, and Apple just 'scaled it up'. As if they didn't already have the iPad on the drawing board the day the first iPhone was released.
Looking at the internals and the OS it is running on, yes, it's a big iPhone (or iPod touch). That's the whole point of it. It's a big iPod touch that for the very reason of being bigger (and faster), allows for usage patterns that are not possible or convenient on an iPhone. It's a bigger iPhone, in the sense that a swimming pool is a larger bathtub, both are filled with water, but one you can only sit in, while in the other you can also swim (this analogy is taken from some Gizmodo commenter by the way, but I think it's a good one so I just plagiarise it).
The way people are trying to twist the fact that the iPad is a bigger iPhone as if that makes it a rip-off, not innovative, or that it has no reason to exist, is laughable. The 'iPhone OS' platform as a whole is the innovation here, the iPad is just the next step in leveraging that platform beyond devices the size of an iPhone.
@Ducman69
Yes, but that larger screen is the WHOLE point of getting an iPad. Better applications utilizing the extra real estate.
I know. I have one and it has lived up to my expectations. Reading the Times, USA Today, NPR, etc, in one device is nice. On the iPhone- less so. My son, loves Netflix. To state the obvious- it looks better on an iPad than on the iPhone.
@abedinthehouse Was there ever any question about that? Is there a problem with that? I have a desktop, does the same thing as my laptop, only a bigger screen and more powerful. Same with the iPhone, and iPad.
@staticjethro Gb is not GB. It has 2x 1 giga bit mobile DDR SDRAM. You have to deivde by 8 to get the actual giga Bytes. So yeas, the device has only 256 GB, while that is the same as 2Gb.
@mrpixel iPad is snappy to use and i would love to have one with 3g in it but i was hoping that this has better specs. I think, for this machine to be revolutionary- it must have the capability to dominate computing platform in the coming years. Anyway, I'm still crossing my fingers the 4g iPhone: http://bit.ly/4g-iphone-going-to-verizon
@Jakob Yeah that would be great and all and sure it is running great, but this just shows why Apple is being so stubborn on the multitasking issue. If this thing only has 256 RAM then I doubt it will never be able to multitask unless Apple is planning on just one task. That is a little crazy to have just 256 RAM in something that apple claims will go toe to toe with the netbooks of today and have only 1/4 (sometimes 1/8) the RAM.
@staticjethro There is a difference between Gb and GB. 1 GB(gigabyte) is equal to 1024 megabytes of memory. 1 Gb(gigabit) is equal to 128 megabytes of memory. So, 1 Gb mobile DDR SDRAM (x2) is actually 256 megabytes(MB) of memory.
http://www.bisnotb.com/
@Firehazel Ignore, seeing as people have pointed his fault 8 times... *facepalm*
@angermeans is a quarter the ram a big deal when comparing it to a device that is running a full blown desktop OS? exactly how much more memory is needed to run windows and windows applications compared to iPhone OS and its applications?
@ummmwhat Visit this site on the iPad and tell me how many images load:
http://acidcow.com/fun/8608-acid-picdump-165-pics.html
Although it's not what you'd see commonly on websites, the heavier that content gets, the more the iPad will either have to limit the content shown and/or kill off background apps when it gets multi-tasking in June.
256MB is just the lowest they could get away with but it places restrictions on apps like drawing apps (layer and resolution limit). 512MB would have meant way more freedom.
The iWork apps are heavy apps and I'd be surprised if Pages uses under 150MB considering the desktop version has a 512MB minimum requirement. The system will use under 30MB so you are at best left with 70MB. If you have one more heavy app running, it will have to be shut down.
256MB is workable but like I say, it's the lowest/cheapest they could get away with. Obviously they are holding back features and spec for the next revision otherwise you won't need to upgrade. Notice how they released the CPU spec before people bought it but not the RAM - Apple know it's a low amount too.
Also for the record, I don't see it as particularly bad that it's a scaled up iPod, the iPod is a great device as long as we keep in mind that's what the iPad is. Some people imply it can replace a laptop, which gives the wrong impression.
All of this is old news. Even I am getting pissed by all the crap they are putting out as news.
@Scubasteve03 And in ifixits own words:
"there's nothing revolutionary here"
@Scubasteve03 It wasn't news before. It was all speculation. Big difference. Also, you don't like, you don't read. Simple.
@Ducman69
It is revolutionary. Only device I know that has a large screen with smartphone hardware and software. Ill give Apple credit for this, as this then allowed them to be able to increase battery capacity and achieve longer battery life than many other netbooks/notebooks. But thats about it.
@mrpixel Odd, my comment disappeared.
Long story short, they weren't the only ones to think of putting a bigger screen and battery on a smartphone. Look at the announce date of the Dell Mini 5 for example. =)
@Ducman69 Awww, I was expecting the X-ray image of the chip to reveal a magical unicorn inside! :(
@mrpixel what is revolutionary at taking the same hardware, and using a bigger screen. do i revolutionize my pc, when i buy a new bigger screen? or when i buy a bigger tv?
hint: NO
doesn't mean it's a bad thing. but revolutionary means doing something radical new that was never available in some form before. i had an internet tablet with a.. 10"? or 8"? or what ever screen 10 years ago. it ran on Windows CE, which is a phone os, too..
they made a big ipad. there's NOTHING revolutionary about it. nothing. still nice. but nothing "wow". (and by far nothing perfect, both in the way apple handles it, and the way it got actually built)
@davepermen
My bad, pardon my ignorance, forgot about the Window CE tablets.
Ok nothing revolutionary here.
@davepermen Why is everybody stuck on the specs. When they say revolutionary, they refer to the experience. And yes, we see already the first touch optimized software, etc.
@Atkins the interesting thing is that the software itself (the os and the provided apps) don't bring anything new that wasn't on the iphone before, just bigger.
software will adapt with the resolution, and this is NOTHING revolutionary. nowadays, applications get developed with 1080p in mind. years ago, they where developed with 1024x768 in mind. years before that, they where designed with 320x240 in mind.
this is NOTHING special, it's ordinary progress. there was nothing more in the whole design phase than "lets make a bigger ipod, that would be a nice tablet, then".
people get overly exited about really really ordinary stuff that is a) nothing new, b) nothing special and definitely c) NOTHING REVOLUTIONARY.
more screenspace means apps with more information presenting / more functions/menus right available? since when is that revolutionary?
we're not talking 1990 here, we're in 2010. we've seen that EVOLUTION (not REVOLUTION) time and time again at so many places (including other mac products) that it's ridiculous how blinded people are right now.