“In technical circles, one part of the iPad buzz has been its microprocessor, the A4, with a lack of detail from Apple (AAPL) fueling speculation about what it can or can’t do,” Erik Sherman writes for BNET.
“Unlike most of its other products, Apple went with a custom semiconductor design,” Sherman writes. “The prevailing opinion says that the chip is nothing special.”
Sherman writes, “However, it looks as though Apple has released some details — through a number of patent applications — and that there is something interesting going on in the silicon.”
• 2220100042900 — Write Failure Handling of MLC NAND
• 2220100042817 — SHIFT-IN-RIGHT INSTRUCTIONS FOR PROCESSING VECTORS
• 2220100049951 — RUNNING-AND, RUNNING-OR, RUNNING-XOR, AND RUNNING-MULTIPLY INSTRUCTIONS FOR PROCESSING VECTORS
• 2220100049950 — RUNNING-SUM INSTRUCTIONS FOR PROCESSING VECTORS
• 2220100042818 — COPY-PROPAGATE, PROPAGATE-POST, AND PROPAGATE-PRIOR INSTRUCTIONS FOR PROCESSING VECTORS
• 2220100042807 — INCREMENT-PROPAGATE AND DECREMENT-PROPAGATE INSTRUCTIONS FOR PROCESSING VECTORS
• 2220100042815 — METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR EXECUTING PROGRAM CODE
• 2220100042816 — BREAK, PRE-BREAK, AND REMAINING INSTRUCTIONS FOR PROCESSING VECTORS
• 2220100042789 — CHECK-HAZARD INSTRUCTIONS FOR PROCESSING VECTORS
Sherman writes, “All deal with microprocessor architecture details, suggesting that, unlike the speculation, Apple has used customization of the processor design to optimize performance, either on the A4 or in a future chip.”
Much more in the full article here.
After 4 Patron drinks, I can’t digest this. Can someone put this in drunkese for me?
The me too box makers will not be able to drop the iPad OS into their Windows knockoff. If the OS or an app doesn’t see the A4 chip, it will not run!
@MadMac
Dude, The A4 is snappy!
“The prevailing opinion says that the chip is nothing special.”
The prevailing opinion has always and forever underestimated Apple.
I have no idea at all what I am looking at. I’m glad, actually. Then I would know how these things work and then my brain would be too big and all my hats wouldn’t fit.
Can someone explain, or at least translate?
Thanks.
Apparently, The Steve is inordinantly fond of vectors.
This seems to indicate that they may have leveraged their experience with particularly the AltiVec optimizations in Mac OS X to accelerate iPhone OS X as well.
One of the advantages of the PowerPC versions made by PA Semi was their spectacular power efficiency while processing large amounts of complex data – it would stand to reason that their AltiVec experiences could have been put to use as well.
This could also be related to some of the OpenCL concepts (while probably not leading to a full implementation).
Interesting…
MDN word: blood — as in blood on iPad’s anti-stain glass touchscreen…
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@Swing Geezer
It seems that Apple has found a way to implement DLP, which is a parallel-processing strategy that does not require multiple cores but has traditionally had major problems. What this artcle is suggesting is that these patents may mean that code (ie. an app) that runs on this chip has a good chance of running faster, and not breaking simply because DLP is being used. If it didn’t run faster, it would still work, and the developer could update the code to allow it to take advantage of DLP.
I say shenanigans on those who think there is nothing special on that chip. Naysayers at best and fools at worse. There is truly secret sauce flowing through it.
Does anyone really believe that Apple would showcase it’s A4 without it being special?
This ain’t no blogging party, this is Apple.
@MacRick
“Apparently, The Steve is inordinantly fond of vectors.”
All the better to render type quick and clean.
Ugh. I pity the fool who be writin’ trash about the A4. They don’t know nuthin’ ’bout it, but dat don’t stop ’em from shootin’ their big piehole off anyway. I feel like bustin’ one of them punks up. Ugh.
Really, WOW! That A4 is A1.
I’m with madmac
Its Friday and rum time aaarrrggg (pirate talk)
Does any one remember the greatness of NeXT?
You know, I had that feeling when I looked at the ARS article, while I didn’t know enough about current low power/embedded CPU design (so I couldn’t fault his logic or assumptions) Something just didn’t seem right (that it was just a cut down off the shelf arm cpu (and not even the most current…
What didn’t make sense was that from a complete users point of view Apple delivered the goods! The thing (iPad) was driving a large screen (lots of pixels to light & render) and was wicked fast while barely sipping power.
You can tech talk out your ass all day (and Stokes did that in spades) but when it comes down to REAL performance (you know for things we users actually want to do) the iPad blows everything on the market away by a huge margin; in performance, size, weight & battery life.
So I guess Jon (ARS) what I am saying is while I can’t dispute your claims (that it is nothing special), the performance of the iPad.. does.
@ MacRick,
UNIX in general is very, very Vector driven. The Mac OS X GUI is very vector graphics heavy. Windows by contrast is all Raster based. If you’ve never seen Windows Direct X Crash taking the Windows GIU Graphics engine with it you’ve missed one the funniest, fuglist, sight in the tech industry, which is Windows not knowing now to properly refresh and redraw the screen.
(Think Modern Artist after being clubbed about the head and face by a 35 stone police officer for 40 hours straight).
@ Demon
Why would a police officer do with 35 stones, especially if he were busy clubbing an artist about the head and face?
Why = What, of course
35 stones = 490 lb = 222.26 Kg = almost twice the minimum weight of a “heavyweight” Sumo wrestler
A moden artist should probably be able to run circles around such a heavy guy
in drunkinese – it’s faster because it doesn’t lose it’s sh*t when you interrupt it.
@ Demon
“…a 35 stone police officer…”
On the internet, everyone knows you’re British.
Moooaaah, it’s brilliant I tell you.
@ the stoners
“…a 35 stone police officer…”
On the internet, everyone knows you are a savvy user aware of the metric, imperial and other measuring systems… except for for Americans, they will think you are British.
Now for the 40 hours, well that’s the same in decimal time, so they guy might be from France. That’s Freedom for you yanks by the way, seeing as you don’t have it anymore.
@ Road Warrior
Careful. We’re all armed.
Yes, from the tank tops I have seen I am well aware of the bare arm concept. Fortunately the “Aim for Bin Ladin hit Saddam Hussein” guidance missile system makes the odds of actually hitting the target about the same as Microsoft making an operating system immune from viruses.
But hey, don’t let me stop you. By all means feel free to join the long line up of yank terrorists that have been trying to stop me. So many of you have tried. None of you have actually succeeded.
Kinda sucks when you let go of the moral high ground. And to think, so many of your friends tried to warn you, it was just the wrong thing to do.
Now you must endure the consequences of your very foolish actions.
What happened to A1 through 3?
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Or does the “4” stand for something else, such as processing cores? Maybe the next iPhone will have an “A2″…
I think you-all are missing the point, Apple has created its own chip!!!! It can customize it(performance) as needed not depending on making their hardware fit a chip design, no worry about buying outside products (initial cost high but over the long term awesome), control production of chip, etc.. etc…etc…With the R&D;at Apple and shit-pile of cash, no telling what chips they may come up with in the future. Intel should take notice.
You think they’d spend a billion dollars on “nothing special” ?
What a bunch of moroons ….
Thank God for Apple …. my world would suck without them
The A4 is RISC based, and Apple along with IBM,and Motorola were the originators of the RISC concept. PC dick heads like to make fun of the old G4 but it would run circles around any Pentium 4 of the same time frame. The main problem with old G4 other than IBM and Motorola quitting in the middle of the game was a lack of supporting chips which Intel had a choke hold on at the time. Most of the over educated under brained tech journalist have never heard of RISC much less understand it. RISC will do multiple operations on a single clock pulse, something Intel chips of the time couldn’t do. The old G4 is not dead, it’s alive and well at Apple.
A4 was the German designation for the V2 rocket.
Yeah…definitely A4…
@breeze
yes…yes I do…
@ Swing Geezer
I wear a 7 3/4 hat and it makes no sense to me.
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