All Articles in chipset

Apple iPad A4 Chip Designed by PA Semi Team… or Not?

Apple A4 chip

Venture Beat claims a “very trusted” source has informed them that Apple’s PA Semi team might not have been behind the new iPad’s Apple A4 chipset:

PA Semi didn’t do the A4. It was the existing VLSI team. Apple has made custom chips for years like the Northbridges for G4 and G5.

This [...]

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Apple A4 iPad Chipset = ARM Multicore Cortex A9 + Mali 50 GPU

Apple A4 chip

According to Bright Side of the News, it turns out that newly spun Apple A4 system-on-a-chip that debuted alongside the iPad does indeed pack more punch than the Sammy in the iPhone 3GS:

A4 is a System-on-a-Chip, or SOC, that integrates the main processor [ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore i.e. Multi-Processing Core, identical to ones used [...]

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Could 2GHz ARM Cortex A9 Chip be Future iPhone/iTablet Bound?

iphone_3g_s_speed_force

During ARM’s Q3 financial results announced today, 9to5Mac noticed this little gem:

including a license for ARM’s 2GHz implementation of a dual core Cortex-A9 processor.

We’ve heard about the Cortex A9 before. Purportedly, is 5x faster than an intel Atom, yet uses the same amount of power in a 60% smaller package.

Could this be [...]

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1GHz ARM Mobile CPU on the Horizon — but is it iPhone Bound?

iphone_3g_s_speed_force

Apple Insider reports that Samsung has a 45 nanometer, 1GHz ARM processor, code-named “Hummingbird” on the horizon.

It uses the same Cortex A8 architecture as the current iPhone 3GS (which runs at a clocked-down 600MHz) but due to the smaller size, is said to not consumer any more power or generate any more heat than the [...]

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Rumor: $800 iTablet to Use Custom Apple Chipset?

Mac Touch

Following up on rumors of a $800 Apple netbook, MacBook, iTablet, etc. VentureBeat reports that Apple might also use the new platform to introduce their long-rumored custom system-on-a-chip.

This would be the result of Apple purchasing fabless chip design firm Palo Alto Semiconductor (PA Semi) and hiring Papermaster from IBM and graphics processor (GPU) gurus x2 [...]

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iPhone 3GS Graphics Even More Powerful than Imagined?

iphone_3g_s_speed_force

MacRumors is reporting that Apple’s new iPhone 3GS, while indeed using Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR graphics core, may just have a little more under the hood than previously thought:

iPhone developers, however, have discovered that the iPhone 3GS has extension files named “IMGSGX535GLDriver” suggesting that the new iPhone uses the more powerful graphics processor intended [...]

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iPhone 2010 to go Multi-Core ARM Next Gen?

iphone_3g_s_speed_force

CNET has an interesting post up detailing what we can expect in the next generation ARM processor. Just yesterday we took a look at the iPhone 3G’s ARM 11 vs. the new iPhone 3G S’ Cortex ARM8 and the difference was impressive — most impressive. Well, next year is promising a dual-core ARM Cortex A9…!

Icebike [...]

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Inside the New iPhone 3G S Processors: More than Just Mhz

iPhone 3G S Speed

Anandtech gives their usual in-depth look at the processors inside Apple’s new iPhone 3G S. First the CPU, the new ARM Cortex A8 and the short of it is — if the iPhone 2G and 3G were old 486 PCs, the iPhone 3G S would be a Pentium:

As for the GPU, the PowerVR SGX — [...]

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iPhone 3G S Speeds and Feeds Revealed: 256MB RAM, 600Mhz CPU

iphone_3g_s_speed_force

T-Mobile Netherlands (via Wired) has let slip the formerly elusive specs for the iPhone 3G S:

256MB of RAM 600Mhz CPU

Anandtech (via Macrumors) gives further info:

Although unannounced, the iPhone 3GS uses (again) a Samsung SoC but this time instead of the ARM11 + MBX-Lite combo it’s got a Cortex A8 and PowerVR SGX; just [...]

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iPhone 3G S Uses PowerVR SGX to Become One with Speed Force

iphone_3g_s_speed_force

Apple Insider reveals that:

Sources have now reported that Apple has detailed that Imagination’s PowerVR SGX is indeed the graphics processor used in the iPhone 3G S, and that it is “designed for OpenGL ES 2.0.” The new 2.0 specification of OpenGL for Embedded Systems eliminates most of the fixed-function rendering pipeline for a [...]

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