a4

A Little Chip Company And The Recipe For The iPad’s A4 Chip

There’s not much secret left in the sauce for the iPad’s A4 chip – it’s a faster, customised version of the chip in the iPhone 3GS. But the recipe probably comes from a tiny chip design firm Intrinsity.

April 6, 2010
Computing

Deconstructing The iPad’s A4 Chip: It’s Still A Giant iPhone

Tear down the iPad, and you see that the internals are quite similar to the iPhone’s, albeit nested behind a giant battery.Tear down Apple’s new A4 processor, though, and you see just how deep the similarities run.

March 2, 2010

What’s Inside The A4?

There’s a lot of speculation about what’s inside the A4, Apple’s custom and ultra-power-efficient chip that powers the iPad. Nobody knows for sure because, like all their products, it’s a seeeeeecret. Until now.

February 23, 2010

Manufacturing Complicated Chips For Phones Is Real Expensive-Like

That’s the moral of this NYT story about the bubbling war in mobile chips. They’re expensive to make. And, no one’s better at making them than Intel, whose manufacturing tech is years ahead of anybody else.

February 9, 2010

Apple’s PA Semi Might Not’ve Designed The iPad’s A4 Chip

A curious tidbit from VentureBeat: The A4 chip that Apple’s pimping hardcore in iPad promos might not’ve been done by their PA Semi team (which Apple acquired for $US278 million). Their source says it was designed by Apple’s existing VLSI team, who made custom chips like northbridges for the old G5 Macs.

January 28, 2010
Computing

Apple iPad First Device To Use “Apple A4″ Processor

Apple didn’t buy P.A. Semiconductor for nothing. And now the fruits of that buyout are appearing: The Apple iPad uses a 1GHz “A4″ chip that can decode HD video for up to 10 hours on a single charge. [Apple iPad]

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