Apple is reportely working on a quad-core processor based on TSMC's 20nm manufacturing process. TSMC expects to produce millions of chips on that process starting in 2H 2013, and Apple is said to be one of TSMC's largest customers for those chips. About a year from now is the earliest we could see a device with such an Apple quad-core chip.
Real world performance on a quad-core A7X would likely double the A6 in benchmarks, but provide closer to 1.5x the real world performance. Applications will have to be updated/optimized to take advantage of four cores. Existing Android tablets with quad-core processors do well in benchmarks like Geekbench which utilize all four cores, but the vast majority of applications are only designed to use two cores effectively. As it happens, the Apple A6 significantly outperforms most of today's quad-core mobile chips when running apps that effectively use only two cores.
any informations about the processor architecture
A quad-core could be an A6X instead of a A15 based CPU and if I'm not mistaken, the dual-cores A15 are more efficient than the quad-core A9
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Apple is a bit beyond incremental updates at this point. They would spend more money on R&D than they would make on releasing an update every 6 months. The main reason for the iPad 4 is simply so they could push out the old connector as quickly as possible. Which is something I bit on....I sold my wife's iPad 2 and gave her my iPad 3 so I could have all the same connector. Her on the other hand can care less about the connector.
Next iPad will surely have a new processor, thinner body, anodization, and better battery life. Key things we should see from the next launch are major software improvements that highlight what the iPad is capable of. Working with software developers on creating a more immersive gaming experience, and tools to help us integrate everyday lives into the iOS eco-system. This is the only way to stay competitive for Apple. Hardware is going by way of the PC these days, where the hardware has advanced much farther than the software, so lets catch up there first and then see what needs to improve.
Apple spends an extra $1 billion on research in 2012, still way less than competitors
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3583984/apple-financial-annual-report-2012-research
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Apple just handed its
annual report in to the SEC, revealing that the company laid out an extra billion dollars on Research and Development this year. But despite jumping from $2.4 to $3.4 billion dollars, R&D spending stayed flat as an overall percentage of revenue a scant 2.2 percent thanks to a 45 percent increase in sales, to $156 billion. In comparison, rivals like Google and Microsoft spend around 15 percent of revenues, and Samsung sits in between at around 6 percent.
Just a third of Microsoft's $10 billion
Apple says it racked up the billion-dollar increase by hiring more researchers. A year ago we reported that the company was
expanding research efforts in Israel, which is likely responsible for a big share of the bump. The addition is part of a hiring increase across the board as pointed out by
The Next Web, Apples headcount grew from a total of 60,400 full-timers in 2011 to 72,800 in 2012.
During the year the company also increased its floor space from 13.2 to 17.3 million square feet as it added 33 new retail stores, fueled by retail sales growth of 33 percent. And land holdings are up as well, going from 584 acres in 2011 to 1,077 acres this year as iApple announced plans to build a
data center in Prineville, Oregon as well as add
extra solar energy capacity at its Maiden, North Carolina center. Perhaps the most surprising figure, however, is a 94 percent increase in Japanese sales over the year, as the iPhone became the
top-selling handset in the country despite the long dominance of domestic brands like Sharp and Fujitsu-Toshiba.
