When Steve Jobs announced the dual-cored Apple A5 System-on-a-Chip (SoC) at the iPad 2 event, I assumed it was using an ARM Cortex A9 dual-core processor as its CPU. Last year's Apple A4 SoC used a single core, 1 GHz Cortex A8 after all, so why wouldn't the Apple A4's successor use the Cortex A8's successor? However, John Siracusa of Ars Technica raised an interesting alternative on this week's Hypercritical podcast -- what if Apple is instead use two Cortex A8 cores instead?

His argument was that, with the Cortex A9's architecture, it should be more than the 2x speed boost Steve Jobs claimed at the iPad 2 event. If it was more than 2x the speed, Apple would certainly have said so. 3x, 4x -- all look better on stage and on websites (much like the 9x graphics claim).

With previous year's 13-inch MacBook Pro, Apple stuck with old Intel Core2 Duo processors and Nvidia chipsets and when questioned about it, Steve Jobs replied that Apple thought major battery life and graphics improvements were more important that relatively minor CPU speed boosts.

Could the same be true with the Apple A5? Could Apple have stuck with the older Cortex A8 and shifted performance increases to the GPU (PowerVR SGX), all to keep that 10 hour battery life?

We'll have to wait for the teardowns to find out.

[Hypercritical]

Apple's 4th generation iPhone HD/iPhone 4G could be set to launch with a print magazine quality 960x640 in-plane switching (IPS), fringe-field switching (FFS) display, and a beefy 512MB of RAM according to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo the in hit-and-miss industry trade, Digitimes.

Rumors of a 960x640 display first surfaced back in March from Daring Fireball. Given Steve Jobs' fondness for calligraphy and type and how much he's pushed their aesthetics in the digital age finally shipping a display where the dots no longer come between content and eyes would no doubt appeal to him. IPS is the technology used in the new iMac and iPad, FFS in HTC's Legend, and they help increase viewing angles and display quality. Resolution and technology would combine to make iBooks on iPhone the most high density, high quality type experience yet.

Further, they report Apple will stick with the ARM Cortex A8 currently found in the iPhone 3GS and iPad A4 SoC, not the multicore Cortex A9, but they'll be doubling the RAM to 512MB which should be especially useful for the new multitasking API found in iPhone OS 4. That number does conflict with the 256MB analysis based on lost iPhone G4 prototypes, but Apple can and will make changes and decide final specs up to and until it goes into full production.

Oh, and Foxconn will ship 24 million of them starting in June.

[Digitimes]

The interwebs are once again lit up with speculation about the iPad's new Apple A4 chipset, this time because Ars Technica is saying that instead of the next-generation multicore ARM Cortex A9 unveiled at CES 2010, the iPad is using a variation of the last-generation AR Cortex A8 that powers the 2009 iPhone 3GS.

This is based on 1) Apple being secretive about the chipset and not bragging like other companies would 2) "multiple sources who are certain for different reasons that this is indeed the case."

First things first. Apple being secretive proves nothing. Apple is secretive about everything, and they've said before they don't discuss chipsets because they don't think it matters to consumer electronics users (and, hey, Apple is secretive). They didn't talk at all about the iPhone 3GS chipset -- all they said is it was twice as fast. We only know that it uses an ARM Cortex A8 because people bought it and tore it apart to find out.

As to the multiple sources, if one of the "different reasons" is direct knowledge of the chipset, then they could be exactly right. If not, then... eh, maybe, but we're back to waiting for the iPad to ship and people to tear it down.

In the interest of being complete, however, Ars speculates that if the iPad is indeed running the Cortex A8, this might be what's making it so fast:

it turns out that the the A4 is a 1GHz custom SoC with a single Cortex A8 core and a PowerVR SGX GPU. The fact that A4 uses a single A8 core hasn't been made public, but I've heard from multiple sources who are certain for different reasons that this is indeed the case. (I wish I could be more specific, but I can't.)

In all, the A4 is quite comparable to the other Cortex A8-based SoCs that are coming onto the market, except that the A4 has even less hardware. The iPad doesn't have much in the way of I/O, so the A4 itself can do away with the I/O that it doesn't need. In contrast, the typical Cortex A8-based SoC has more I/O hardware than a mobile phone can use, because you never know what customers will need which interface types.

Ars, like Venture Beat, also thinks Apple's PA Semi team may not be involved in the iPad because they're working on a variant for the 4th generation iPhone. Either way, they believe software will ultimately be more important than hardware -- which is something Apple's been saying for a while now.

So, do we care if the iPad has an ARM Cortex A8 rather than a Cortex A9? Do we want Apple pushing the hardware, or are we happy with them prioritizing software?

Apple Insider reports that Samsung has a 45 nanometer, 1GHz ARM processor, code-named "Hummingbird" on the horizon.

It uses the same Cortex A8 architecture as the current iPhone 3GS (which runs at a clocked-down 600MHz) but due to the smaller size, is said to not consumer any more power or generate any more heat than the current 833MHz generation.

Apple has made huge investments and agreed to large scale licenses of the ARM chip, even as they're moving ahead with their own, in-Apple chipset initiatives.

So, even if Samsung ships this baby in time there's still no telling if Apple will use it for a forth generation iPhone, likely to cycle around June 2010.

Still... Zoom. Zoom.

Anandtech gives their usual in-depth look at the processors inside Apple's new iPhone 3G S. First the CPU, the new ARM Cortex A8 and the short of it is -- if the iPhone 2G and 3G were old 486 PCs, the iPhone 3G S would be a Pentium:

As for the GPU, the PowerVR SGX -- even if it's clocked down to half-speed, it's rendering geometry 3.5x faster with a fill rate 25% higher as well:

Their take away? Well, they say the iPhone 3G S packs a similar hardware punch to the new Palm Pre, but while webOS uses some of that power for 3rd party multitasking, Apple's "highly optimized software stack" will bring the speed.

And that only scratches the surface. For the gritty details, check out the full article.

[Thanks to Damon for the tip!]