“In response to some remarks comparing Apple’s ‘A5’ microprocessor with that of Nvidia’s ‘Tegra 2,’ of which I cited an example on Wednesday from Raymond James’s Hans Mosesmann, analyst Didier Scemama of RBS today offers what he thinks are some important points to consider in the A5′s favor,” Tiernan Ray reports for Barron’s.
“Nvidia’s Tegra 2 is only 49 square millimeters, while the A5 is 122 square millimeters in dimension,” Ray reports. “One reason for the discrepancy is that Apple’s chip was built in a 45-nanometer process by Samsung, while Nvidia used Taiwan Semiconductor’s 40-nanometer process, so features are larger on the Apple chip overall. But, ‘The major difference in specification between the chips is that Apple uses Imagination Technologies‘ PowerVR SGX543 dual-core GPU in the A5 and Nvidia uses its own GPU called GeForce.'”
Ray reports, “This was, then, a deliberate move, Scemama thinks, on Apple’s part, to make a larger chip, in order to have substantial graphics performance. And here, he cites OpenGL benchmark results that suggest, ‘that the A5 beat Tegra 2 handsomely in third party tests.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]