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iPad tech specs reveal Cortex A8, 256MB Ram, PowerVR SGX 535
Now that the iPad has been out and tested for a few days, developers have a much better idea of what's exactly under that perfectly-formed hood. Turns out the A4 processor is modeled on the Cortex A8, a fact which was not only expected, but gives a little extra credence to the theory that chipmaker Intrinsity (who are behind the A8) was recently purchased by Apple. Elsewhere on the iPad, you can find the same PowerVR SGX 535 GPU and 256MB RAM that can be seen in the iPhone 3GS. But apparently the whole is better than the parts -- our buddy Craig Hockenberry sat down last weekend and did some serious benchmarking, and found that the iPad is actually many times faster than the iPhone 3GS at all sorts of tasks. As Craig said, this is doubly remarkable when you think about it: not only did they get these kinds of speed improvements in just a matter of years, but they've increased the battery life as well. Apple's purchase of PA Semi (and possibly Intrinsity) and their commitment to make their own chips has paid off in spades already. In other words, the hardware tells us what we already knew about the iPad: it's a beautiful and amazing device. And since there is so much shared hardware, it'll be interesting to see what kinds of speeds we get out of the next version of the iPhone. Lots of these changes and updates in the hardware seem directly transferable right back there.
Apple's A4 system-on-chip gets decoupled from iPad, investigated with the help of an X-ray
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.
