“Apple’s long-rumored tablet has ruffled feathers and turned heads. With a familiar interface, Apple’s momentum, iTunes integration, and a price that the even non-geek can easily fall in love with, it has all the makings of a hit. But deep inside lies something even more revolutionary,” Nicholas Bonsack reports for Macworld.
“At the heart of the iPad lies a tiny sliver of silicon. A game changer within a game changer. That’s Apple’s A4, a system-on-a-chip (SoC) that reportedly combines a low-power CPU, a graphics processing unit (GPU), and other hardware, much of which is still confidential,” Bonsack reports. “What we do know is that it finds an almost ideal balance between battery life and speed, such that the iPad can animate and zip about at a pace that iPhone 3GS users could only dream of.”
Bonsack reports, “With the A4, Apple still maintains its long-standing relationship with ARM while delivering on performance, with a design that no competitor can use in its own products. More to the point, the A4 puts a very critical part of Apple’s iPad under its very own control. And that move is unprecedented.”
Read more in the full article here.
Will the bigger stronger offspring of this chip power laptops or desktops someday? What about future AppleTVs?
I would love to see ARM (Apple) Inside of Macs, but I doubt it will ever happen as Apple’s and Intel’s relationship is supposedly very strong.
I’m very happy to see Apple doing custom hardware, this will hopefully prevent others from copying and also others from hacking (psystar), and will further distance Apple from everything else out there and make their products more unique and desireable.
Jobs is attempting to future-proof Apple. Get the right talent in Apple, as well as the right technology, and in a post-Jobs company, Apple will (continue to) thrive.
i was waiting for someone to pickup on this..the future of this chip is pretty exciting..
Apple has gently and softly tapped into Intel, Amazon, all netbooks,
all portable gamers, all tablets, all OS’s, Word, Powerpoint, and Excel, all phone carriers with upcoming VOIP apps, and NOT ONE of them can license copy or use their processor unless Apple says so. This processor will also go into the new iPhone in June and Apple cuts out another middleman and cannot be copied by other smartphones.
Apple really snuck in the door in every category with this device and this processor, without majorly hurting relationships with anyone.
The reason Apple didn’t put a simple iSight in this version 1 iPad, is because they would also have to put in iChat, and iChat is an immediate threat to AT&T;’s iPhone 3G 2 year contract subscriptions. They want VOIP to take off slowly, otherwise even more bandwidth will clog AT&T;and make the device look bad, when it is really the carrier’s fault.
This device will run iChat well, but Apple is milking the all the cows slowly so they won’t get the hoof.
This is all about the A4 chip — the rest is almost perfunctory.
If common sense tells me that, then why can’t other people, especially analysts, figure that out instead of whining and crying.
I am the average Joe and not any smarter than the average Joe, so why are people so shallow-minded. The same way of lack of thinking is why the Demrats have the majority and M$ has so much leverage.
Does anyone knows how many cores are in this chip? I thought I read 2 cores somewhere…
You could say that the A4 is a foray, technologically speaking.
I thought from a diagram I saw it had 4 cores- maybe why its called A4.
Apple have been at the mercy of chip-makers fro too long. This is a breakthrough however, I don’t think Apple can or would want to tackle the desktop variety of chips.
They have gained a lot by using switching to Intel chips and enabling Windows to run – it’s certainly been a big factor with the switchers that I know. Why would they jeopardize that?
Until the recent issues between Intel and Nvidia, Apple’s switch has been relatively painless.
It’s all part of the Arms race that the opposition can’t win. As Steve Jobs pointed out they’re now the biggest mobile device company in the world. They have the ability to buy up vast stocks of components, have things custom built for themselves, create huge ecosystems that make the competitors “me too” offerings look pathetic. A war is fought on many fronts and Apple can outspend, out develop and outflank anyone.
With the way IBM/Motorola, Mafia$oft, and Adobe (to name a few) have shit on Apple over the years, do you blame them for wanting to gain some measure of control over key elements of their products?
@ytseman3
I think you are right. With their own chips, they can lock OS X into the hardware if they want to. Also, they can optimize the design of the chip for OS X. Also, it gives them leverage against whatever chipmaker gets too big for their britches. And what about graphics cards and whatnot? The possiblities and potential are very exciting.
I still like my crappy macbook.
The A4 Skyhawk was a really cool airplane too.
Here here to Cubert, every major player has tried to stab AAPL in the back over the years, God speed in putting them all in the ground! Revenge is so SO sweet!
DULL, $ony, IBM, even Intel deserve to be put down.
When the momentum of the mac has outstripped the supply of windoze switchers, they will dump Intel quicker than quick!
Why not just build Mac OS into the A5 chip? If they have to optimize each other, then why not just build the software into the processor and attach your other parts to a system controller…sounds like the shortest/fastest data path to me.
Apple is giving a new definition to the term “complete hardware/software solution”.
Jobs will retire when Apple is a complete machine, designing most or all of their own hardware components…and they will do Dell style undercut pricing on vastly superior hardware because there will be no middle man on any components.
You can be proprietary and a monopoly as long as you have the best product and the best solution and you don’t sit on your thumbs.
Apple will be left in good hands and good position when Jobs does retire.
deepdish, I don’t think so. Using this chip in its tablet doesn’t put any of Apple’s current relationships in a bind. Even using it in a new gen of the iPhone won’t break any major relationships – though things might go smoother if Apple introduces multiple models … touch, iPhone, iPhone 4G … with only the high-end model using the A4.
MacBliss, the A4 is, by definition, a multi-core chip. It is a SOC, including at least the CPU and GPU on one piece of silicon. However, I suspect you mean how many CPU cores. And I can’t answer that. My guess, though, would be a single CPU core running at 1GHz. That’s half again as fast as the CPU in the iPhone and leaves lots of room (to 2-2.5 GHz) before multi-cores become a real advantage. Multi-tasking will be enabled first.
The A4 could be one of the most key things Apple has done in a very long time for their overall company. How can companies compete with this. Take for instance what their weakess product AppleTV can become with the power of this technology let alone there other devices. Right now the biggest limitation apple and all other phone companies have, is real computing power. This us a Golden Egg for Apple, in the form of an iPad!
Seems one thing the chip cannot do is help APPL. Down 10% post iPad and dropping more.
is it really doubtful that the A4 is single core (like the A8 1GHz hummingbird by samsung – the .6GHz is in the 3GS) given the ARM roadmap and that the competition is using the Cortex A9 multicore in upcoming designs, plus the horsepower required to drive a 1024×768 display at 24 or 30bit color. The A9 is a multi-core design. A big cellphone maker is going to release a quad core in 1Q 2010 according to industry rumors. Maybe the team from PA semi was the first to get the quad core design to work with software. Think Grand Central and the quote about having the software and hardware under the same roof in the design of the chip. What other cellphone maker can you think of that is even capable of deploying a mobile OS that can really take advantage of multi-core like multi-threaded UNIX based iPhone OS. Time will tell
I wonder how much this chip is costing Apple, which really looks at its viability as a laptop chip vs. a high end intel multi core chip.
Imagine that for the same price as a high end multi-core intel chip Apple could put 8 or 10 of these things in and still consume less power. Since we really know nothing at this point, it’s hard to even speculate. But I can imagine a laptop with 10 of these things running at 1.5 GHz and with Apple’s new dispatch tech it would be amazing. Of course, they need more apps that take advantage of the multi-cpu world we are moving to and the software is lagging.