Chipworks tears down Apple's A5 chip

A5 processor in the iPad 2

Your inner (and outer) geek will thank you for checking out Chipworks' teardown of the A5 processor inside the iPad 2.

Chipworks confirms that it is, in fact, made by Samsung and not by TSMC despite Apple's new deal with the latter. This may change in the future, however, especially if the A5 features in the next-generation iPhone.

The 120 square millimeter processor is more than twice the size of the original iPad's A4 processor (53 square millimeters). While it's still a fairly uncustomized, off-the-shelf version of the A5, its contributions to the impressive performance gains of the new iPad 2 are not to be sneered at.

Chipworks says "we have to de-layer the chip down to a level where we can see the block layout of the chip; not an easy thing when there's nine layers of metal!" Sounds like fun. "In fact, these days it's easier to go in from the back and remove the substrate silicon, and look at the gate level from below. Then we can identify the circuit blocks that make up the full device."

Don't try this at home, children.

[via CrunchGear]

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Source: http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/r…

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Your inner (and outer) geek will thank you for checking out Chipworks' teardown of the A5 processor inside the iPad 2. Chipworks...

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Cy Starkman

"While it's still a fairly uncustomized, off-the-shelf version of the A5"

One imagines it is a totally off the shelf and uncustomised version of the A5 unless that isn't a picture of an A5.

;)

March 15 2011 at 12:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Ron

Why post a graphic without the ability to read what's on it, or provide a link to the source graphic without us having to hunt around??

For those that are interested, here it is:
http://www.chipworks.com/media/wpmu/uploads/blogs.dir/2/files/2011/03/APL0498_APL0498E01_Backside.jpg

March 15 2011 at 11:22 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Its because the 25WHr battery is mainly drained by the LCD. I believe someone somewhere mentioned that the LCD drains about 2.4WHr

March 15 2011 at 7:50 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

David Frantz

Here is a perfect example of why TUAW needs to configure their web pages to allow zooming. I sit here unable to see much at all on my iPhone.

The big question in my mind right now is the process size. I'd like to know how they managed the performance increases without sapping power. Many have indicated 40nm tech but that would imply more power over the A4. For me this doubling of performance at the same power levels is very intriguing, if done without a process shrink even more so.

March 15 2011 at 7:00 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to David Frantz's comment

KeynoteKen

That COULD be related to the purchase of Intrinsity. They have a set of design tools that helps to make any chip more efficient and consume low power. Now that the company belongs to Apple, while everyone may be using ARM cores, Apple's A5 (A6 and beyond) difference will be in how the tech brought by Intrinsity and PA Semi can improve on that

March 15 2011 at 10:38 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply