Apple iPad and Samsung Wave share a brain
By Tim Stevens 
posted June 8th 2010 6:59AM
posted June 8th 2010 6:59AM
UBM TechInsights Verifies That the Samsung Wave S8500 Features the Same ARM Core as the Apple iPad
OTTAWA, Ontario, June 8 /PRNewswire/ -- UBM TechInsights today announced an important discovery in the application processors of two popular consumer electronics devices. UBM TechInsights analysis has revealed that the just-released Samsung Wave S8500 features the same 1 GHz ARM CORTEX A8 core as that found in the very popular Apple iPad.
(Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100608/SF16849)
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20100608/SF16849)
"By investigating the Samsung S5PC110A01 application processor and comparing it to the A4 application processor found in the Apple iPad using our specialized lab techniques, we were able to confirm that not only is Samsung the manufacturer of both application processors, but both application processors feature the same 1 GHz ARM CORTEX A8 core manufactured using a 45-nanometer low-power fabrication process," said Young Choi, Senior Manager of the Technical Intelligence Group. "With this find, we begin to see how Samsung is successfully asserting itself as the leader in the wireless and mobile applications processor market."
With the recent surge in sales of the iPad, speculation that the next generation Apple iPhone will also feature the same A4 processor as that of the iPad, and the belief that the soon-to-be released Android OS-enabled Samsung Galaxy S Smartphone will also use the S5PC110A01, sales of Samsung manufactured processors is expected to reach very high-levels. With these key sockets in place Samsung will easily maintain its position as the market leader in application processors that it originally attained in 2009.
UBM TechInsights used the best and latest technical expertise and analysis tools, in combination with years of experience in all aspects of the IP / Technology Lifecycle, to make our determination of the similar ARM cores in the Samsung S5PC110A01 and the Apple A4. Information about UBM TechInsights research on the Apple A4 processor can be found at ubmtechinsights.com. For more information about available research on the Samsung S5PC110A01, please mailto:sleclaire@ubmtechinsights.com.
About UBM TechInsights
UBM TechInsights is the preeminent firm for the provision of sophisticated information and advice to technology companies. We assist in the management of their technology and intellectual property portfolios, ensuring the reduction of risk and maximizing return on investment. Our leadership position is founded upon our commitment to the utmost integrity, and sustained by the ongoing investment and acquisition of the knowledge and capabilities necessary to meet our clients' evolving needs. When companies need assistance in managing their most complex technology or IP challenges, they turn to UBM TechInsights for assured results. For more information about UBM TechInsights, go to www.ubmtechinsights.com.
SOURCE UBM TechInsights
The cell processor used on the PS3 was designed by IBM and Sony and manufactured by Toshiba. It happens all the time. I bet A4 specs were designed to meet Apple's requirements ( like the cell was built for the PS3), but other Toshiba products also use the cell now.
If you don't know how the industry works STFU!
@jaffreywali Not the same processor though, PS3 would have a much more powerful version of Cell while the TVs Toshiba put out would use something much weaker.
@jaffreywali
Good point. As someone with a little experience in this industry I can only say the level of general ignorance in some of the comments here is astounding. As if you can cut & paste IP blocks together like lego's, or as if Apple would be even remotely capable of designing a whole new chip from the ground up, in less than 2 years. It's ridiculous.
Of course they're re-using existing tech and of course this means they use existing ARM technology adapted to fit their specific needs. It's hardly a surprise competitors use similar designs, and Samsung isn't even a real 'competitor' to Apple since they already make half of the components in the iPhone.
Jobs is a salesman. He inflates facts for the purpose of selling his products.
@Volker
Exactly! It's amazing to see so many people get upset at the guy for using basic sales techniques. I watched a little of the keynote, and Jobs seemed pretty down to earth, poking fun at himself and his own company a bit and proudly showing off his new product. I thought to myself "good salesmanship", not "this guy is evil!".
What do you people want? Do you want to see him stand on stage and list tech specs in a monotone voice? I swear, the guy says something on the order of "my product is great!" and people want to crucify him. It's funny, but sad at the same time.
@Volker
I think you don't know what ARM Cortex A8 means. Anybody can use the design and Samsung is an OEM fabricator. The design should be almost similar each other. A4 has optimized A8 CPU, different GPU, different RAM, different application processor from S5PC110A01.
@arnoldphone I know anyone can use the design. What i'm saying is no one else markets the design as effectively as Steve. That's why he's a good salesman. What you just said in your post is technical and i understood you, but as ebgolfin pointed out, it's not the way Steve presents it... Purely because it's not geared towards that crowd. He says what the people want to hear, with simple words. "Amazing, fast! Look at this, it can do this wooosshhh... See, very fast, now i can sit here and do it"...
like that a surprise http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=CW0DUg63lqU
@Atlantian typo like thats a suprise he said it on video we have always been shameless about stealing they knew that company made the chip with samsung so the bought the company to gain access to samsungs ip
@Atlantian
You should think Google also stole android. Samsung is an OEM fabricator.
haha! I have a wave, and it's fast! btw, I get multitasking, video calling (1.3 MP), n wireless, bluetooth 3.0, mind-freaken-blowing Super AMOLED, hd video recording, unibody metal construction... you know, pretty much everything the iphone 4 will have except for the apps (which i rly don't give a crap about)
@artstate : So you only care about the hardware platform and not the software you can run on it? Wow, you must have sooooo much fun playing with your piece of plastic....
@oddysea
seriously dude... What I said is that I don't care about the number of apps. This is a brand new platform and the number will grow. it grows every day.
Of course i care about the software: my exchange support is good, nice facebook integration, contact management is flawless, camera software is flawless. This phone does not hang or freeze. Has a good webkit-based browser, excellent management of connection, i can even use it as a wifi hotspot, i have TV out, and the capability to use different software to sync to includeing USB Mass storage (instead of just iTunes).. So i have no fucking idea why you would say the sofware sucks. I didn't come here to say the iPhone sucks, just to point out that the two phones have very similar capabilities
Samsung's name for this chip is Hummingbird, wich they claim as their SOC design. (And Samsung has long tradition in SOCs)
Also it should be the fastest smartphone processor available graphics wise, with it's Power Vr 540 GPU!
@WiesiAut
oh, i should read more carefully. The A4 and Hummingbird share the same Cortex A8 CPU (as does Snapdragon and OMAP3) what a surprise. The Cortex A8 was designed by ARM (not Samsung or Intrinsity - they only design the SOCs)
So i guess the A4 and Hummingbird are not the same SOC, because i heard of the A4 only having a PowerVR 535 GPU.
@WiesiAut Hummingbird is not the name of the SoC. It's the name of the modified A8 core. Intrinsity made Hummingbird as a hard-macro. That is, the design comes as-is and SoC designers just plop it down into the floorplan and hook up the I/O's.
Hummingbird is unique in that it uses dynamic logic in its datapaths as opposed to static logic that others use. This allows it to scale to higher clockspeeds than otherwise possible.
Who says that ipad and iphone do not have copy and paster capability? They are all liars now. Ha, buddy, ha!
@Kamal
Yes, Apple worked so hard to bring copy&paste feature to the iphone. In fact, they worked over 3 YEARS to do that.
And now Apple is working a a full multitasking interface, ETA :10 years.
@magallanes You mean they prioritized and put copy & paste, that "Everyone else" had, behind things that almost no one had.
Like it took Google 2 years to implement a number code to unlock the phone... I'm sure they had people working on that for 2 years before they were able to put it in ;)
@magallanes but it's still better than copy paste on Android. What happened there?
@magallanes
I was making fun of the A4 chip. apple copied and pasted the chip in the ipads and iphones. :)
@darksharpie
The grid is the exact same thing as a number code. It is arranged in the same way, it just doesn't show the numbers.
iPhone 4 here, see features, availability, prices, video and photos everything on my post :
http://www.worldshotcake.com/apple/iphone-4-announced-see-all-here/
take care
It infuriates me whenever Jobs or anyone else suggests that they actually made the A4. It would be like me saying I designed my computer from the ground up with a soldering iron, PCB and lots of copper, even though I pieced it together using off-the-shelf-parts like Apple did with the A4.
@Locust : It would be closer to you building a custom car, designing the chasis, suspension, bodywork etc. For the engine you use an existing V8 from say Ford, and then you claim 'I designed and built this myself'. Which is a fair enough comment, I wouldn't for one second think that you meant you built the engine itself from scratch (or expect you to). Apple have custom designed the A4 to perform functions vital to their operation, the heart of the A4 is ARM IP and as far as I remember Apple never claimed to have invented or designed the Cortex.
I love how apple big up the A4 chip like this, especially since they say it's so good! What's even better, is that when you've heard all the fanfare about it, then watch the video of the Snapdragon processor in the Nexus One trouncing the A4 in the iPad on Javascript tests.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/20/android-froyo-speed-ipad/
As I understand, both the A4, and the Snapdragon (resident in the Nexus One at least) are clocked at 1GHz. What does this say about Apple's programmers?
@sturd So, one test and you've made up your mind? What about the graphics tests showing a 3GS being faster than a Nexus One? You can't be that naive to think a single test proves any performance claim... They're both companies with developers that are hard at work improving the performance of their products. For example, Chrome had a much faster javascript engine than Safari 4. But now Safari 5 is out, and their performance is about equal...
I'm not sure why I'm getting drawn into commenting on this, but you guys all know that the major point of system-on-a-chip (SoC) is the *system* part, right? There are a number of different ARM cores available, but many vendors use essentially the same ones and everything is licensed left and right. There is no news here. The real art here is putting together a set of resources that do what you want, and nothing else, with the ability to power-down unused bits, etc. etc. IMHO the point of the A4 is that Apple is now in control of the mix of capabilities and the power envelope. They don't need to settle for some common-denominator of components that Qualcomm or NVIDIA thinks OEMs will want; they can tailor it however they like.
@vadeskoc Exactly.
Apple A4 = SYSTEM-on-a-chip
ARM Cortex-A8 = Application processor that is simply *one part* of the whole A4 SoC.
It seems that no one (including Engadget) appreciates the huge difference between these two things.
Here's the analogy: The ARM Cortex-A8 is like the Intel processor in a PC. The Apple A4 is the entire PC. An analogous version of this article: "Alienware thinks their PCs are all awesome and that they designed them themselves, but really, since they use the same Intel processor that eMachines and a bunch of other crappy PC-makers use, they're actually all the same! lolololol!!!1!"
It's the *other* stuff on the A4 that (theoretically) makes it special: all the other processing units (graphics, cellular baseband, etc.), the efficiency of the buses/networks that connect them, and the power-saving methodology.
@skyrefuge A lot of the power-saving aspects are built into the A8 reference design and the (similarly off-the-shelf, though doesn't Apple own that company too) graphics core, though; since those are likely to be the main centres of power consumption.
It obviously isn't trivial to build these things and nobody is suggesting that Apple (at the time, Intrinsity) did less work that Samsung, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Nvidia, or any other company that makes chips which are basically similar with slight difference in tradeoffs and included features.
However, there's some kind of implication that this particular chip is radically different and better than the many available alternatives, which simply isn't true. It's probably better than some of them, but it's in the exact same class and will have broadly similar performance. (And Cortex A9-based chips for tablets are not in the same class; these will dramatically outperform it on CPU tasks. They aren't ready for use in phones yet, though.)
By the way, it's not just Apple who plays this kind of publicity stunt; Tegra and to a lesser extent Snapdragon are examples of exactly the same thing (manufacturing slightly-differentiated systems using commodity processors, while trying to make it sound like a night-and-day difference). Hardly surprising these companies market their stuff. In fact it's perhaps more surprising that some companies still make chips in this space called OMAP1234 or whatever it is these days...
@xxxsam you really compared Intrinsity to the other big boys...have any notion what nvidia or Texas represent in R&D? geesh...
As an educated consumer one thing I can't stand is getting lied to in the face like during the keynote. But hey it's the phone we're interested in and not the PR crap in front of it/behind it. What you guys thing, is it worth the hefty price?
samsung galaxy s will screw the new iphone 4, but not in design
What a surprise Steve Jobs claims in house R&D credit for something designed by someone else.
Just like Dashboard, which ripped Konfabulator (now Yahoo Widgets) so bad they discontinued the Mac version before Yahoo bought them out.
EFI, another claimed Apple innovation which is in fact all Intel's IP and was first used Itanium server systems.
The list goes on Apple develops very little and repackages a lot, and lets be honest they develop some of the best intergrated systems in the world but they use the same stock as everyone else and Steve Jobs lies to his supporters TOO MUCH.
So I have a question. Is that A4 chip functioning at 1Ghz or less? I know on the IPAD it's 1Ghz, but they didn't clarify if the iphone was. Would they cripple it on the iphone to make it less than 1Ghz?
Jobs made the chip with his middle nut. Cause he got three.
Apple never said "we built it from scratch" but instead "we designed it" much more vague. Nothing special industry-wise as "silent" licencing is common. I bet it's the same for the capacitive screen and the retina screen.
Samsung ALSO makes the audio chips for the iDevices.
So many fandroids these days. I suppose now that webOS is old news, you guys need something to cling to...
Well, this page i spent some time tracking down in my lunchtime today.
enjoy!
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/productInfo.do?fmly_id=834&partnum=S5PC100