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.

So, we won’t see PA Semi until… Apple A5?

Apple iPad A4 Chip Designed by PA Semi Team… or Not? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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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 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.

Still no word on RAM though…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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