Of A4 Chips and iPads
The most important thing about the iPad announcement is that Apple is making their own silicon. It is amazing that Apple can both get a chip out the door and keep the price of the iPad down at the same time. I suspect that what is driving the decision to acquire and go inside the company for a chipset is the need to combine a CPU and a GPU on the same silicon. You save all sorts of power and gain significant bandwidth between the two when you build them on one chip. I think Apple's needs were getting just a little bit ahead of what the silicon industry had to offer. Said another way, the silicon industry is effectively unaware of what the mobile device industry is demanding these days.
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To send a trackback, use the URL of this story appending ?page=tb at the end.Comments (2)
Anders from Boston, MA
People that have tried the iPad seem to be mentioning it's speed as a major feature. No doubt Apple is gaining some wins here by combining the CPU and GPU on one chip.
Anders from Boston, MA
Looks like I might be on to something. Daniela Kustre at brightsideofnews.com is reporting that the A4 is indeed a combination CPU and GPU based on ARM intellectual property.
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