S5PC110A01
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Apple's A4 is like Samsung's S5, except where it's not
Though the Apple iPad and the Samsung Wave most assuredly share the same brain, EE Times would like you to know there's more to a chip than its core -- analyzing Apple's system-on-a-chip designs in detail back to early iPhones, the publication noticed that Cupertino's silicon both has custom design quirks on top of ARM and shows heavy influence from Samsung as well. EE Times claims that while the A4 and Samsung S5PC110 are similar, there are certainly differences, enough to call the A4 a custom design. Essentially, Apple has a taken a one-size-fits-all product originally engineered to meet the needs of a broad range of OEMs and reduced its complexity, footprint, and cost to match Apple's particular goals. As far as whether PA Semi or Intrinsity had a hand in that design, the authors suggest only the latter seems very involved. What all this means for intellectual property questions is anyone's guess -- we'll let the lawyers fight that one out -- but when you encounter diehard fans that claim one's ripping off the other, at least now you'll be able to calmly explain the situation. Find the deep technical dive at our source link.
Apple iPad and Samsung Wave share a brain
At his keynote yesterday, Steve Jobs very proudly touted the "wonderful" A4 processor, saying it was "designed by our own team" and, additionally, "is so good." That chip is the muscle inside the iPad and the new iPhone 4, but now we're finding that others are using it too... a little more quietly. We knew that Intrinsity was the company behind the (previously dubbed) Cortex A8 chip, and that Intrinsity worked with Samsung to develop and manufacture it. Now we're finding that Samsung is keeping a little of that sweet, sweet silicon for itself. The Samsung Wave uses a processor called the S5PC110A01, which UBM TechInsights has verified shares the same 1GHz A8 core as Apple's A4. No, Bada may not be showing quite the potential of iOS 4, and something tells us the new iPhone will be a bit more popular than the Wave, but it's safe to say these two handsets have definitely fallen from the same ARM family tree.
