Apple A4 processor - taken apart

Zardon · 05-04-2010, 04:56 PM

Kyle at iFixit and his buddies at Chipworks tore into the A4 chip that makes an appearance in the Apple iPad. The chip is an ARM processor with a small RAM package made by Samsung. The processor itself is made entirely by Apple although it is based mostly on the original Samsung processor made for the iPhone.

Other interesting points include the possibility of an onboard GPU, the same one powering the iPhone, namely the PowerVR SGX 535. This means while the screen is bigger the graphics aren’t much faster. The iPad also has 256MB ram and, most important, the CPU uses very little power at all.

The A4 sips power. In fact, power consumption is probably the reason Apple hasn’t stepped up performance much from the iPhone. In order to get 10 hours of battery life, the entire iPad (including display) has to pull less than 2.5 Watts on average.

AMD4EVER · 05-07-2010, 09:58 PM

my buddy bought an iPad, i wanted to hate it, but i just ended up wanting it.

it is really fast. doesnt seem to stall for anything. A4 CPU seems the way to go in the mobile place.

procupine14 · 08-06-2010, 07:01 PM

I like the iPads well enough but my problem is I can't really justify paying the premium for it when I have a small laptop that is ultra light and I carry everywhere already.

I think it is a great tool expecially for people in the mobile business world (goes without saying even more convenient with 3G). However, I personally will probably never own one because I can't find a use for something residing between my iPhone and my 13" laptop.

overclockthesun · 05-04-2011, 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AMD4EVER

my buddy bought an iPad, i wanted to hate it, but i just ended up wanting it.

it is really fast. doesnt seem to stall for anything. A4 CPU seems the way to go in the mobile place.

So did my buddy. With one problem, he hadn't setup wifi properly in his house at the time he bought it ( he went abroad to study and another friend changed all his wifi settings). So while we played with it, I realised that the iPad was absolutely useless without a working internet connection