Apple's A5 chip rumored to have 4X the power of A4

AppleInsider is reporting that both the iPad 2 and the next generation of the iPhone, both rumored to be released later on this year, will feature the next generation of chips designed by Apple. The A5 (named after the A4, the current chip in most iOS devices) is rumored to have two cores, making for faster graphics performance, and enabling things like the iPad 2's rumored Retina Display and HDTV out of the next version of the Apple TV.

There's a lot of technical information out about the new chip (it will likely include the new SGX543 graphics core, an upgrade from the current model used by Apple), but with two cores running, the new chip model is supposed to offer around four times the processing power of the current generation. That allows for both the mentioned graphics upgrades, as well as faster computing tasks straight off of the processor with OpenCL.

Apple's Intrinsity and P.A. Semi are likely to be the companies behind development, while Samsung is likely working on actual production. We can look for faster, better, stronger Apple chips later on this year.

[via Engadget]

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Source: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/01/16/apple_expected…

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AppleInsider is reporting that both the iPad 2 and the next generation of the iPhone, both rumored to be released later on this year, will...

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Anthony

Should be called A16!!!!!

It sounds a lot more impressive than "A5," which sounds like a small incremental upgrade, and not something like 4X the power.

January 17 2011 at 5:25 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Anthony's comment

AndrÃ©

No, that would be confused with the ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore due in 2012.

January 18 2011 at 9:29 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Raj

No they should have called it the A3, which has 2x the area of an A4 sized paper :-)

January 18 2011 at 2:35 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Scott

Wonder what multiple cores and a beafier graphics core will do to battery life...

January 17 2011 at 3:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

2 replies to Scott's comment

Anthony

There's so much empty space in the iPad, more if it has the flat back, that they could easily make a bigger and probably more efficient battery for it to accommodate the major power increase.

January 17 2011 at 5:28 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

AndrÃ©

Overall it should be an improvement considering increased Instructions Per Cycle (IPC) have shown advancements in other mobile devices, e.g. like notebooks etc., when it comes to power usage.

The faster the processor can finish a given task, the faster it can get back down to a lower power state, which in the end will save power.

Not only that but the Apple A4 is manufactured using a 45 nm process (at Samsung) and the new Apple A5 should be manufactured on either a 40 nm or 32 nm process (also at Samsung foundries), which makes it easier to increase clocks and decrease power usage.

Apple owned Intrinsity and P.A. Semi should also have been hard at work on the System-on-a-Chip (SoC) to make it a more power-efficient package.

January 18 2011 at 9:26 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

river

the current apple tv does hdtv, just not 1080p.

January 17 2011 at 3:39 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply