Processor Articles on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog

Apple's A5 processor now manufactured in Texas

by Chris Rawson (Dec 16th, 2011)

"Designed by Apple in California" -- you'll find that on virtually every Apple product. While it's well-known that the brains of Apple's outfit are indeed housed in California, it's almost as well-known that Apple's products are almost wholly manufactured overseas. Indeed, Apple has been a target ...

Intel hints at option of custom chip foundry for big customers

by Michael Grothaus (May 26th, 2011)

Reuters is reporting that Intel "wouldn't blink" if given the chance to make custom chips for Apple's devices, like the iPhone and iPad. At an investor event in London on Thursday, Chief Financial Officer Stacy Smith told journalists that "there are certain customers that would be interesting ...

Tenuous rumor pegs iPad 3 CPU as a dual-core 2GHz part

by Samuel Gibbs (Apr 20th, 2011)

Treat this one as pure speculation, because frankly, that's what it is. A "high-ranking official" at Samsung let slip that the company is "planning to release a 2GHz dual-core CPU-equipped smartphone by next year." This means that Samsung, one of the world's biggest chip manufacturers and a ...

A5 beats Tegra 2 in benchmark tests, thanks to larger size

by Mike Schramm (Apr 11th, 2011)

GLBenchmark pitted a few tablet processors against each other in a speed showdown, and Apple's custom-designed A5 chip in the iPad 2 handily beats NVIDIA's Tegra 2 processor, used in competing tablets like the Motorola Xoom. A few analysts are saying that it's the size that matters in this case ...

Chipworks tears down Apple's A5 chip

by Chris Ward (Mar 15th, 2011)

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 ...

Apple selects Taiwan's TSMC to produce its A5 chip

by Chris Ward (Mar 9th, 2011)

Apple is reported to have inked a deal with Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC to produce the A5 dual-core chip for the iPad 2, in a substantial blow to former producer Samsung. TSMC was apparently chosen over Samsung because tests showed it was consistently producing the chips more efficiently ...

Sandy Bridge GPU may suffice for low-end Apple laptops, processor could show up sooner than expected

by Michael Rose (Dec 9th, 2010)

As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the first round of Sandy Bridge-powered PC laptops is about to hit the market. Intel's new chip architecture is intended to provide a major boost in power for mobile and desktop machines, but there's been some concern about the integrated GPU on these devices ...

Foxconn parent company raising prices for Apple, others

by Mike Schramm (Oct 15th, 2010)

This is the downside of being Apple -- just as they get prices and costs to where they want them, those same prices and costs tend to go up again. Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai has reported that it will raise its manufacturing prices in China, directly affecting Apple's and other companies' costs ...

Google buys firm of former Apple employees

by Mike Schramm (Apr 22nd, 2010)

Google's purchase of a firm staffed with former Apple employees is surrounded by mystery, according to AppleInsider. Agnilux is a small San Jose startup founded by a few former Apple employees, most of whom left the mothership right around the time of the P.A. Semi acquisition. Other than that, ...

Rumor: Mac Pro Intel 6-core i7 this month

by Dave Caolo (Feb 2nd, 2010)

Apple's top-of-the-line Mac Pro hasn't been updated since the Quad-Core model received support for 16GB RAM in September of '09. The last major revision introduced the Nehalem Xeon 3500 Processor last March. Today, HardMac is reporting that the Core i7-980X and Core i7-970 processors could ...

Five things to bring back from the iPad

by Mike Schramm (Jan 29th, 2010)

MobileCrunch has an interesting post up about five things the iPad has and does that Apple would do well to bring back to those of us using the iPhone. I think we'll see more of these as we go along (especially as, you know, some of us actually get to touch and use the device), but this list is a ...

Rumor: Intel's Core i5 to show up in MacBook Pros this month

by Steven Sande (Jan 13th, 2010)

Spanish website faq-mac.com had an interesting tidbit this morning. As seen in the screenshot from the site, an Intel Retail Edge program email showed a giveaway for a MacBook Pro. While that's not unusual -- a MacBook Pro makes a great prize for any contest -- the email showed that the MacBook ...

Intel uses iTunes for benchmarking

by Aron Trimble (Jan 11th, 2010)

Here's a bit of interesting for you from the folks over at APC: during a press event at CES 2010, Intel used iTunes to tout its latest processors rather than one of the other oft-used performance-testing suites. Specifically, they showed off an i5 processor not by running some complex graphics ...

iMac benchmarks and review say it's a beast

by Mike Schramm (Nov 17th, 2009)

People have had their chances to put their grubby hands on those "incredible" iMacs that got released a few weeks ago, and the results are in. And they're great, apparently. First up, MacRumors has a collection of a few sets of benchmarks on the new machines, and the Core i7 processor (a $200 ...

What exact processor is inside the new iPod touch? TUAW digs deeper

by Joachim Bean (Sep 14th, 2009)

Sure, the biggest mystery around the new iPod touch is the omission of the heavily-rumored camera, like the one found on the new iPod nano. However, there is some speculation and wondering in what is actually at the heart of the new iPod touch. As you may know, all devices that run iPhone OS are ...