The new Apple TV is running on an Apple A4 chip, just like iPhone and iPad, and almost certainly running iOS, so where are the apps, games, and web browser?
We got Netflix, but it was built in just like YouTube. We got iOS under the covers but no iOS-style UI. We got AirPlay, so we can stream from iPhone or iPad, and presumably there’ll be an Apple Remote app to control Apple TV via iPhone or iPad…
… but I kinda wanted more.
Apple TV wins on ease of use, but for power and flexibility one of those new Mac Minis and the excellent Windows 7 Media Center are the nuclear option, and many also cheap boxes like Roku, Boxee, etc. arguably have more bang for the buck.
Could Apple have an Apple TV SDK in the wings, something to announce for developers at a late date? Or is it the most closed of the already closed iOS boxes?
I have to believe gaming on Apple TV is a gold mine, so my bet is we see apps… eventually. What’s yours?
We previously mentioned iFixit was tearing down the iPhone 4, and had confirmed 512MB of RAM and said the front and back displays were Corning Gorilla Glass. Well they’re done with the teardown now and here are some more details.
The only area where we’re still unclear is the Apple A4 system-on-chip. iFixit says 1GHz below but Engagdet thought that, while faster than iPhone 3GS, it was slower than the confirmed 1GHz iPad, and MacRumors rough benchmarks bear that out. So what’s the deal on the chip? Is it doing more or did Apple clock it down to get that amazing battery life and lower the thermal impact?
Like the iPhone 3G and 3GS, there are two silver Phillips screws at the bottom of the phone. But removing these screws releases the rear case instead of the front glass, giving you immediate access to the battery.
Unfortunately, the LCD panel is very securely glued to the glass and digitizer. If you break the glass, you’ll have to replace the glass, digitizer, and LCD as a single assembly.
The 3.7V, 1420 mAh Li-Polymer battery is not soldered in place, and very easy to remove.
The iPhone 4 sports two cameras — a 1.3 MP front-facer, and a 5 MP beauty on the back. Both are located on their own independent boards, making it possible to physically remove the cameras without damaging the phone.
The phone uses the 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 core, much like its bigger sibling, the iPad.
Unlike the iPhone 3GS and iPad — which are both equipped with 256 MB of RAM — the iPhone 4 has a whopping 512 MB.
The AGD1 is the new 3 axis gyroscope that we believe is designed and manufactured by ST Micro for Apple. The package marks on this device do not appear to be the currently available commercial part, L3G4200D.
In what can only be described as a work of genius, Apple has integrated the UMTS, GSM, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth antennas into the stainless steel inner frame.
Broadcom provides both a BCM4329FKUBG 802.11n with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and FM receiver and a BCM4750IUB8 single-chip GPS receiver.
We’ve identified chips from Broadcom, Cirrus Logic, Numonyx, Samsung, ST Micro, Skyworks, Texas Instruments, and TriQuint.
Everything you need to know about Apple’s new iPhone 4
iPhone 4 is the most significant hardware revision to Apple’s widescreen iPod, breakthrough internet communicator, and phone since the original iPhone 2G was released in 2007. But how significant is it? Apple CEO Steve Jobs said there were over 100 new features and singled out 8 for special attention. We’ll take the most interesting of both and see just how important they are, after the break.
In typical Apple hyperbolic fashion, they introduce iPhone as changing everything, and they have a video to prove it. Beyond the hyperbole, the thought they place into every detail of what they make is impressive. New mixes of stainless steal. New technologies for battery life. Manufacturing procedures that create unmatched build quality. And consider this: how many companies have a Senior Vice President of design?
FaceTime got the Steve Jobs “one more thing” bump at this year’s WWDC so it’s a fitting place to start the feature discussion. Now Apple didn’t invent video calling, of course, but once again they’re taking what has been a niche technology and making it mainstream. There are a couple of huge challenges this time: at the moment it’s Wi-Fi only and iPhone 4 only. “At this time” because Apple indicated they were trying to push it out to the carriers and their 3G (and upcoming 4G) networks next year, and they’ve built it out of — and are releasing the resulting work back to — open standards so it can be implemented into other clients and devices. (If you’re curious as to which standards, Apple lists them as H.264 video codec, AAC audio codec, SIP signaling protocol, STUN and ICE for NAT traversal, TURN for TCP/UDP data receipt, RTP and SRTP for audio and video packet delivery.)
In typical Apple fashion, however, the end user isn’t supposed to worry one bit about all those acronyms mean or how hard it is to do what they’re doing — the end user is simply supposed to press the FaceTime icon and talk to their parents or grandparents, see their children and grandchildren, or tap the switch button to flip from front-facing to rear camera to watch the first footsteps or see the winning goal. That’s how Apple is marketing it and they’re usually very good at marketing.
Yes, on Wi-Fi you could just use your laptop webcam or MacBook iSight, but iPhone 4 will be infinitely more portable. You won’t be (or at least you shouldn’t be) chasing your 2 year old around the garden with a 5 lbs pound computer. And we won’t even get into what it could do for long distance romances…
Apple should add FaceTime to their Mac iChat app eventually (though with their current iOS focus, the resources may not be there at this point). Skype might just be looking at supporting it as well, which would be huge. As an open standard, Android and Palm apps might come along for it as well. And if you paid attention during the keynote, Steve Jobs said 10 million Apple devices — not just iPhones — would support it by the end of the year. So yes, the iPod touch might finally get a camera and get into the fun.
Now there’s no word from Apple about recording FaceTime calls so that may not be available at launch (and hordes of impetuous young Hollywood stars should stop and thank Jobs for that), but it’s something that’s easy to see them adding in the future.
Maintreaming video calls, especially locked to Wi-Fi and a singe device at launch, is a huge challenge and it could be called a gimmick if it were anyone but Apple. (Their focus on small feature sets usually prevents gimmicks from creeping into the roadmap). Unlike mobile web browsing, apps, and video recording, there’s no guarantee FaceTime will take off with the masses. But it’s so scifi you just have to love the attempt.
All previous generation iPhones shipped with 320×480 displays and with Android increasingly going 480×800, conventional wisdom assumed Apple would have to meet that resolution. They didn’t. To lift Apple Senior Vice-President of iOS Software, Scott Forstall’s favorite line — they blew it away. The new iPhone has a 640×960 display at 3.5″ diagonal size and 3:2 aspect ratio for a whopping 326 pixel density per inch (that’s 78 microns wide for pixel geeks). Topping it off is an 800:1 contrast ratio so whites are whiter and blacks are blacker.
That means, very literally, where last year’s iPhone had 1 pixel, this year’s will have 4. For developers this is huge because older apps will look the same as before, if not slightly better because Apple will automatically re-render text and UI elements at the higher resolution. New apps will just look phenomenally better.
Apple is calling this set of technologies “Retina Display” because they day the pixel density is so high your retina can’t distinguish the dots anymore — it looks like a photo or magazine page. There’s some debate about wether or not the Retina Display claim is scientifically accurate (it depends a great deal on how sharp your eyes are and how close you hold it) but for all intents and purposes, it doesn’t matter. It’s sharp enough that most people won’t notice the pixels — until they go back to other displays.
Apple is also using the IPS (in-plane switching) technology they mainstreamed in the iMac and iPad along with LED backlight to create an incredibly wide viewing angle. Where other devices look pretty much blank from the side, iPhone 4 is still legible. For those trying to hide the documents they’re reading on planes, privacy films will no doubt sell like hotcakes. For those who want to share a movie or webpage with their family and friends, it’ll be hugely appreciated.
For their next trick, Apple has used optical glass that’s not only been treated for even greater scratch resistance, not only using their oil-resistant coating, but is laminated directly onto the screen so that there’s no longer a gap in the display. The pixels are right underneath the glass, minimizing reflections and making it feel more like you’re looking at it and not through something into it.
What this means for users is that the iPhone 4 will look better more often, text will be easier to read in a wider variety of circumstances, and apps will appear the same as before if they haven’t been updated, and crisper and clearer than ever before if they have.
Multitasking
Steve Jobs highlighted multitasking as one of iPhone 4’s eight new features but that’s software not hardware, and it will work on iPhone 3GS and iPod touch G3 as well, so I’m covering it in TiPb’s iOS 4 walkthrough.
Still, it should look and work even better on the iPhone 4, and here’s hoping a post-release teardown reveals Apple was good enough to go with 512MB of RAM this time to really keep it snappy.
Cameras front and back (with LED flash)
The big news with iPhone 4 is that Apple introduced a front-facing camera into the mix. It’s only VGA resolution — 640×480 — but for self-protrait profile shots for social networks like Facebook and Twitter, and FaceTime video calls, it should be more than enough for now.
The bigger news is the rear-facing camera, and that iPhone 4 feels like Apple is finally taking digital imaging seriously. The first two generations of iPhone camera were outstanding only in their convenience, with low megapixel counts and serviceable if limited software. Apple kept hiring engineers, however, and while the iPhone 3GS raised the bar to 3.2 megapixels and introduced tap-to-focus and all manner of automagical white balancing, iPhone 4 is a leap beyond. And not just in megapixels.
Sure, other devices already have 8 megapixels, but anyone who loves photography already knows megapixels are meaningless after a certain point (unless you’re shooting billboards, and then you have something in the 23 range already, don’t you?) In the megapixel spec race, just like with dedicated cameras before, hardware makers take the same lens and cut it up ever-smaller, meaning the number of pixels goes up even as the light captured by each one (i.e. the quality of those pixels) goes down. Canon and Nikon are (thankfully) shifting away from megapixels and racing now towards ISO/low-light performance and it appears Apple is following suit.
iPhone 4 is getting a 5-megapixel camera, but instead of chopping the iPhone 3GS lens up even more, they’ve increased the physical size of the rear-facing lens and more than that — added a backside illuminated sensor to really up the low-light levels. They’ve also added an automatic LED flash, which is a good casual option. It’s not the dual flash some other devices have, and its not the sun-like torches the big boys of SLR carry shoe-mounted, but it harkens back to the original iPhone camera — good enough given the convenience of having it built in. (Speaking of which, there’s also a 5x digital zoom which is, eh, a digital zoom — since they obviously can’t do optical given the narrow depth of the phone — but it’s there if sneaker zoom isn’t possible).
720p video recording and editing
The bigger 5 megapixel camera on the iPhone 4 means not only will it do bigger stills but it can now capture 720p videos as well. Apple isn’t specific on its tech spec page, but it looks like they’ve gone from the iPhone 3GS’ 3:2 VGA aspect ratio to a full on 1280×720, 16×9 which will be great news to casual videographers. (Everyone else is carrying around a Mark II as well now for 1080p, right?)
The LED flash can be turned on to brighten dark moments, and while the mic doesn’t seem improved, overall it’s a good upgrade and might even make the iPhone 4 good enough to replace your Flip MinoHD.
Also worth noting, just like with iPhone OS 3.0, iOS 4 will let you trim and share your clips right on device. Apple is also introducing the $4.99 iMovie for iPhone app for more advanced video editing, theming, transitions, and titling.
We’ll cover the built-in functionality in our iOS 4 walkthrough and as soon as iMovie for iPhone ships, we’ll get you a full review. Suffice it to say, if you don’t mind working on a 3.5″ screen, the demos look fantastic.
Folders
iOS 4 has the same 11 home screens as iPhone OS 3.0 but thanks to Folders you aren’t limited to 180 apps anymore — you can shove 12 into the space that previously took only 1, meaning 2160 is you new limit. Strangely, only 9 apps are shown on folder icons instead of the 12 that lurk inside, but thanks to the Retina Display those tiny 9 should look incredibly sharp and clear enough to identify even without the smart folder naming.
However, while Jobs again singled this out as an iPhone 4 feature, it should work (if not as sharply) on all iOS 4 devices and so we’re covering it in our iOS 4 walkthrough instead.
Noise-canceling microphone
It turns out two microphones on the iPhone 4 are more than twice as good as one. The reason is, like some other devices before it, iPhone 4 is using that second mic for noise cancelation. Whatever sounds it pics up that aren’t picked up by the main mic at the bottom — the one you’re talking into — get digitally removed from the audio meaning the person at the other end has a far better chance of hearing more of what you’re saying and less of the party, traffic, or other commotion going on around you.
Gyroscope
Being able to more precisely control position in 3D space on iPhone 4? Terrific. Watching Steve Jobs play Jenga on the WWDC stage? Priceless. Both come courtesy of the new gyroscope included in the iPhone 4, no doubt at the behest of game developers. It will do for the iPhone what Wii Motion Plus did for Nintendo — make good control much, much better. With 3-axis detection, rotation around gravity, advanced motion sensing is a reality. (If you’re not a gamer, that translates into augmented reality apps, which should find fine use of it as well).
Even better, Apple has packaged it up along with the accelerometer to create CoreMotion API for developers so it can be more easily integrated into apps, and more elegantly degraded down to accelerometer alone for previous generation devices that don’t have a gyro. (Just like CoreLocation does if GPS isn’t present).
Stainless steel antenna bands
When Apple says things like they created their own stainless steal alloy for the iPhone 4 band, it just sounds like they’re showing off. When they explain that not only does the band form the main structure of the device (allowing for more room inside), but the gaps — as complained about in earlier device leaks — are caused by it being part of the antenna system of the phone, it’s exactly them showing off.
The structural part is a take-off of the unibody technology that debuted with the MacBook Air in 2008 and has since spread across the MacBook line and into the iMac and iPad. The antenna part? Well, we’ll have to wait and see what difference if any it makes in the iPhone 4 reception — particularly on AT&T. If it improves that there likely won’t be a single complaint about the gaps, not ever again.
Apple A4 processor
The Apple A4 system on a chip (SoC) debuted with the iPad. While Apple isn’t making their own components (yet?), they are taking the ARM Cortex A8, revving it up to 1GHz, and pairing it with an Imagination PowerVR SGX to incredibly performant, even more incredibly power saving results.
Apple truly believes that people serious about software make their own hardware, and with iPhone 4 they’re starting to take that down to the silicon level.
Battery life
Thanks to the Apple A4 and the larger battery crammed into the iPhone 4, battery stats look better than ever, and even match the iPad for video playback.
Talk time: Up to 7 hours on 3G, 14 hours on 2G
Standby time: Up to 300 hours
Internet use: Up to 6 hours on 3G, 10 hours on Wi-Fi
Video playback: Up to 10 hours
Audio playback: Up to 40 hours
Other specs
A few more iPhone 4 specs deserve mention.
Size
Height: 4.5 inches (115.2 mm)
Width: 2.31 inches (58.6 mm)
Depth: 0.37 inch (9.3 mm)
Weight: 4.8 ounces (137 grams)
So, essentially the same size as previous iPhones, but 24% less depth. Which is crazy. There has to come a point where increasing the components, and size of the components in the device becomes more important than thinning it out. Right?
Colors
Like previous years, iPhone 4 comes in black and white. Unlike previous years, iPhone 4’s white option isn’t back-only — even the glass front plate comes in white.
Cellular and wireless
UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz)
GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi (802.11n 2.4GHz only)
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR wireless technology
Pentaband radio is almost as crazy, and certainly good news to people in countries like New Zealand where the additional frequencies will be most welcome. People hoping for the 1700 MHz band for T-Mobile 3G will unfortunately remain disappointed.
TV and Video
It looks like iPhone 4 supports the same PCM stereo audio in .avi file format as iPad, which I thought was for importing footage from older video cameras via the Camera Kit USB dongle. If it is, then does that mean the Camera Kit will work with iPhone 4? (It doesn’t with iPhone 3GS under iOS 4).
VGA cable support is listed, so apps that choose to make use of it can be output through the dock to VGA adapter that was released alongside the iPad. Carrying presentations around with the iPhone will be a great ultra-mobile solution. (Hollywood probably won’t let too many of their movies escape that way, however).
Conclusion
Steve Jobs was right, iPhone 4 is Apple’s biggest leap forward since the original iPhone 2G they rightly claim re-invented the smartphone market. Is it big enough to re-re-invent it? That’s impossible to answer until we’ve reviewed it but the odds are long — that type of thing typically only happens once every decade or two, not year or three. Still it’s one of the most significant pieces of engineering to date and that’s saying a lot.
TiPb will have a complete iPhone 4 review as soon as Apple makes it available and a buyers guide before it goes up for pre-order to help you decide if and when to buy it or upgrade to it.
In the meantime check out TiPb’s iOS 4 preview to see the software Apple’s bringing to bear on this amazing piece of hardware.
(And if I’ve missed anything in this preview, point it out in comments so it can be added in).
Apple’s 4th generation iPhone HD/iPhone 4G could be set to launch with a print magazine quality 960×640 in-plane switching (IPS), fringe-field switching (FFS) display, and a beefy 512MB of RAM according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo the in hit-and-miss industry trade, Digitimes.
Rumors of a 960×640 display first surfaced back in March from Daring Fireball. Given Steve Jobs’ fondness for calligraphy and type and how much he’s pushed their aesthetics in the digital age finally shipping a display where the dots no longer come between content and eyes would no doubt appeal to him. IPS is the technology used in the new iMac and iPad, FFS in HTC’s Legend, and they help increase viewing angles and display quality. Resolution and technology would combine to make iBooks on iPhone the most high density, high quality type experience yet.
Further, they report Apple will stick with the ARM Cortex A8 currently found in the iPhone 3GS and iPad A4 SoC, not the multicore Cortex A9, but they’ll be doubling the RAM to 512MB which should be especially useful for the new multitasking API found in iPhone OS 4. That number does conflict with the 256MB analysis based on lost iPhone G4 prototypes, but Apple can and will make changes and decide final specs up to and until it goes into full production.
Oh, and Foxconn will ship 24 million of them starting in June.
Apple has bought chip designer Intrisity for $121 million. Given the rapidity and speed of the Apple A4 chipset debuted alongside the iPad, rumors have persisted that Intrisity was behind the new system-on-chip (SoC), but confirmation took a while to arrive.
Intrisity was able to take the standard ARM Cortex A8 found in 650MHz flavor in the iPhone 3GS and competing smartphones and speed it up to 1GHz.
That’s an advantage Apple reportedly wants to keep to itself.
It follows on the heels of Apple’s previous acquisition of low-power fabless chip maker PA Semi, though a number of employees from that talent pool have reportedly left. (Some to be snapped up again by rival Google).
Where this leaves the upcoming iPhone HD/iPhone 4G is uncertain, those ARM itself has announced a successor, the multicore Cortex A9, and we’d certainly love to see what Intrisity’s talent pool could do with that. (Also uncertain is what part, if any, this played in recent rumors concerning a potential Apple buyout of ARM itself).
Either way, Apple is continuing to expand their ability to integrate and differentiate down to the chipset level, something non-integrated competitors like Google and Microsoft might have trouble matching.
Multiple sources familiar with the next iPhone have confirmed to me that the back is made out of some sort of fancy glass — and looks pretty much exactly like what’s pictured at Engadget. [...] reader Antoine Hebert emailed with this 2006 Apple patent, for high-durability ceramic enclosures. Glass-like appearance and feel but far stronger and more scratch resistant. And: radio transparent.
We know the current, hi-tech plastic back on the iPhone 3GS (and iPhone 3G before it) is so durable it will not blend, so will glass-like ceramics be equally tough? Tough enough to survive a fall?
Meanwhile, 9to5Mac points us to a Korea Times where Samsung seems to confirm Apple will be using their own system-on-a-chip (SoC) for the 4th generation iPhone, like it does with the Apple A4 for the iPad.
If that chip is as blazing fast as we hope it will be, maybe ceramics is a better choice for the backing anyway. What do you think?
AnandTech has put the iPad’s new Apple A4 chip-to-chip against the Windows Phone- and Google Android Superphone-powering Snapdragon from Qualcomm in a clash of the 1Ghz titans. And the results?
To quote Steve Jobs – boom!
If we take the network out of the equation, the A4 in the iPad has a 37.6% performance advantage over the Qualcomm QSD8250. This actually supports some of the larger performance differences we saw earlier. If Apple can manage to deliver this sort of performance in its smartphone version of the A4, we’re in for a treat.
Indeed! They’re not sure why the difference is what it is, but possible reasons could include iPhone OS being better optimized than Android, or higher IPC based on better core architecture, larger caches, or faster memory bus.
They, like TiPb, want that bad boy in the 4th generation iPhone (which still won’t be called iPhone 4G!). Qualcomm and other chipsets like Tegra won’t sit still, however, so Apple has to keep pushing that bar as well — if they want the cachet that comes with spinning premiere, custom silicon.
iFixit has performed their traditional tear-down of new Apple gear, this time taking the iPad apart piece by gloriously crafted piece, and here’s what they found:
The iPad’s battery has 5.5x the capacity of the battery in the iPhone! The iPad actually has two batteries wired in parallel, for a total of 24.8 Watt-hours.
On average, the iPad sips just 2.5 Watts. That’s 1/5 the power of a compact fluorescent bulb!
The rear case is machined from a single billet of aluminum, increasing weight but greatly improving the rigidity of the device.
The empty void in the upper right corner is where the cellular communications board would go in the 3G iPad.
The A4 is a Package-on-Package (PoP), with at least three layers of circuitry layered on top of each other. A4 is packaged just like the iPhone processors, microprocessor in one package and two memory modules in the other package. They’re all sandwiched together in a very nice and thin PoP.
The iPad RAM is INSIDE the A4 processor package. Confirming this took quite a bit of sleuthing: we had to partner with Chipworks to X-ray the processor. The X-ray revealed two layers of RAM. In addition to the ARM processor, the A4 package contains two stacked Samsung dies.
We will be releasing a detailed analysis of the A4 in conjunction with Chipworks in a few days.
The rumored slot for a camera is actually taken up by the ambient light sensor.
The glass panel is quite thick: about 1.18 mm, compared to the iPhone’s 1.02 mm thick glass. This is necessitated by the panel’s large size.
The touch circuit design is more similar to the old 2G and early 3G iPhones than the current 3GS. Chipworks informed us that “there is so much room in the iPad that Apple didn’t need to use small chips, just the right ones and cheap ones.”
Disappointingly, especially for those hoping for iPhone 4.0multitasking miracles, Furbo.org tests show iPad is using the same 256MB of RAM as the iPhone 3GS. We were hoping for me — as in double. If true, there are other ways to handle the demands of multiple apps, but there’s no such thing as too much RAM when we’re still talking MBs…
Daring Fireball often blurs the line between carefully concealed wink-nudge leak and flat out facetious commentary, so with that in mind John Gruber has this to say about the 4th generation iPhone (which still won’t be called iPhone 4G!):
Apple A4-family system-on-a-chip. Nothing on whether that would be the ARM Cortex A9 multicore CPU with brand new PowerVR SGX GPU we’ve been drooling over, however.
960×640 display. That would be bigger than even the bigger DROID Google Android phone, but fit perfectly with the mediocre pixel-doubling announced for current iPhone apps on the iPad’s 1024×768 display.
Front facing camera. Which would mean all those iChat Video rumors we’ve been hearing about forever would finally come true, albeit after the HTC EVO 4G broke the barrier.
3rd party multitasking iniPhone 4.0. Yeah, that one we’ve got covered going way back. Which just don’t know how they’re going to implement it yet?
Again, this could just be Gruber cracking wise at the WSJ’s Verizon-rumoring expense. However, a lot of this might also be considered obvious things Apple “has to do” to stay competitive. Yet Apple hasn’t exactly been pushing the hardware specs since the iPhone 2G back in 2007. Steve Jobs was rumored to have said the next iPhone will be an A+ upgrade. Is the above a good start?
The interwebs are once again lit up with speculation about the iPad’s new Apple A4 chipset, this time because Ars Technica is saying that instead of the next-generation multicore ARM Cortex A9 unveiled at CES 2010, the iPad is using a variation of the last-generation AR Cortex A8 that powers the 2009 iPhone 3GS.
This is based on 1) Apple being secretive about the chipset and not bragging like other companies would 2) “multiple sources who are certain for different reasons that this is indeed the case.”
First things first. Apple being secretive proves nothing. Apple is secretive about everything, and they’ve said before they don’t discuss chipsets because they don’t think it matters to consumer electronics users (and, hey, Apple is secretive). They didn’t talk at all about the iPhone 3GS chipset — all they said is it was twice as fast. We only know that it uses an ARM Cortex A8 because people bought it and tore it apart to find out.
As to the multiple sources, if one of the “different reasons” is direct knowledge of the chipset, then they could be exactly right. If not, then… eh, maybe, but we’re back to waiting for the iPad to ship and people to tear it down.
In the interest of being complete, however, Ars speculates that if the iPad is indeed running the Cortex A8, this might be what’s making it so fast:
it turns out that the the A4 is a 1GHz custom SoC with a single Cortex A8 core and a PowerVR SGX GPU. The fact that A4 uses a single A8 core hasn’t been made public, but I’ve heard from multiple sources who are certain for different reasons that this is indeed the case. (I wish I could be more specific, but I can’t.)
In all, the A4 is quite comparable to the other Cortex A8-based SoCs that are coming onto the market, except that the A4 has even less hardware. The iPad doesn’t have much in the way of I/O, so the A4 itself can do away with the I/O that it doesn’t need. In contrast, the typical Cortex A8-based SoC has more I/O hardware than a mobile phone can use, because you never know what customers will need which interface types.
Ars, like Venture Beat, also thinks Apple’s PA Semi team may not be involved in the iPad because they’re working on a variant for the 4th generation iPhone. Either way, they believe software will ultimately be more important than hardware — which is something Apple’s been saying for a while now.
So, do we care if the iPad has an ARM Cortex A8 rather than a Cortex A9? Do we want Apple pushing the hardware, or are we happy with them prioritizing software?
The iPhone 3.2 SDK for iPad has officially outed the PowerVR SGX as the graphics core inside Apple’s A4 chipset:
Using OpenGL ES on iPad is identical to using OpenGL ES on other iPhone OS devices. An iPad is a PowerVR SGX device and supports the same basic capabilities as other SGX devices. However, because the processor, memory architecture, and screen dimensions are different for iPad, you should always test your code on an iPad device before shipping to ensure performance meets your requirements.
We typically don’t run those stories about iPhone or iPad component costs anymore because they’re just silly — a couple of hundred dollars in metal parts per unit never takes into account R&D and marketing costs, and things like paying $1 billion for the new A4 chipset in the iPad. Or so hints the New York Times:
At the same time, Apple, Nvidia and Qualcomm are designing their own takes on ARM-based mobile chips that will be made by the contract foundries. Even without the direct investment of a factory, it can cost these companies about $1 billion to create a smartphone chip from scratch.
And this would be for an ARM + PowerVR chipset assembly, how much will it cost when Apple starts spinning their own PA Semi designed chipsets whole? And what’s the competitive advantage that they’re willing to spend so much?
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 information was appended to an article that focused on how great, and power-efficient, PA Semi’s chip design really was. So why wouldn’t Apple use them? Gizmodo speculates:
there likely isn’t a whole lot “custom” going in the A4’s actual design, which by all appearances is an ARM Cortex A9 wrapped up with a PowerVR graphics core and some other parts in a custom SoC. So, new question, if it’s true: What’s PA Semi, which Apple said would be working on chips for iPhones actually working on? A more customized chip would be interesting, since PA Semi’s true talent was in designing chips with ridiculous power efficiencies.
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 in nVidia Tegra and Qualcomm Snapdragon] with graphics silicon [ARM Mali 50-Series GPU], and other functions like the memory controller on one piece of silicon – not unlike what Intel is trying to achieve with its future “Moorestown” Atom processor that debuted inside LG’s Smartphone
Cortex A9 indeed? But no PowerVR SGX like the iPhone. Engadget says this is also similar to the Tegra2 platform. So, it’s more of an Apple assemblage of ARM components rather than anything PA Semi unique, but is it a first step towards more customized silicon? Either way, we’d still love to see this baby powering the 4th gen iPhone and iPod touch.
While Apple’s current generation iPhone 3GS and iPod touch G3 use ARM Cortex A8 CPUs and PowerVR SGX GPUs chips from Samsung, as part of their iPad announcement today, Apple also announced their own chip — the Apple A4.
Custom chipsets have been on Apple’s agenda since they bought PA Semi (Palo Alto Semiconductor) and Steve Jobs flat out said they’d be used in future Apple mobile devices. That future, it seems, starts now.
Battery life — 10hrs for the iPad — was stated as a prime reason for going with a custom chip. As is typical for Apple, they didn’t give any details (and likely the reason they’re making their own chips is so that they can keep those sorts of things secret from the competition), but since they’re rumored to be a massive ARM licensee, and owns part of PowerVR maker Imagine, we’re going to go out on a limb and guess those are still the CPU and GPU respectively.
How much RAM lurks inside the iPad, Apple also didn’t say, and since we only found out the iPhone 3GS has 256MB was after the tear-downs, we’ll likely have to wait on those for the iPad as well.
Of course, TiPb’s mind immediately turns to the chances of having an Apple A4, or similar chip, in the 4th generation iPhone and iPod touch. Combine that with 512MB or more of RAM, a Cortex A9 multicore CPU, latest PowerVR SGX GPU, and little PA-Semi magic and… who knows how interesting 2010 will become!
