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PA Semi's 1GHz Apple A4

Tilpots

Tilpots

macrumors 601
Original poster
Apr 19, 2006
4,195
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Carolina Beach, NC
So it appears that the PA Semi guys really wee working at Apple, and they've produced the 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip. Anybody have a clue about it yet? iPad only? iPhone prospects? Something else???

I'm wondering how this stacks up to the new Snapdragon chips. If it's low pwer enough to hold standby time for a month, it's gotta be ultra low power. From the reports I read, the presentation materials looked fluid as well. Would love to see what these new chips are really all about...
 
Something tells me Apple will not release many details, if any.
 
rdowns said:
Something tells me Apple will not release many details, if any.
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We may not get the details from Apple, but comparison's and benchmarks with what's already out there should be pretty easy to test. Hopefully, somebody will get their hands on one to test before this 60 day waiting period.
 
SpyHunter39 said:
Which is disappointing. The fact that Apple developed their own chip is probably a bigger deal then all of the rest of the iPad
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That Apple announced that the iPad is based on its own proprietary chip is significant. However, proprietary microprocessors are hardly a novel concept. To people who can't see revolutions happening in front of their own eyes, however, there were many things in today's announcement that are very significant.

Let's take one that was not hardware. Today Apple announced a new opensource format for ebooks. This means that anyone can develop software to support the format. Any publisher can distribute books in the format. Books developed for the iPad can be read using any competing device.

Or, you can whine.
 
Yes, the chip is interesting. The performance seems to be exceptional in the videos and the first hands-on reports (see the current top stories on the front page) agree.

Which rather suggests that there will possibly be significant improvements in this year's iPhone. Which I will be very keen to see.
 
Haven't heard anything about the graphics performance yet, though. I'd imagine it has a much beefier GPU since the resolution is so much higher, but I'm wondering how games running at full res on the pad would compare to games running on a smaller screen. Would it have enough horsepower to look even better, or does the extra resolution tax it enough that they'll have to be lower quality overall?
 
MisterMe said:
That Apple announced that the iPad is based on its own proprietary chip is significant. However, proprietary microprocessors are hardly a novel concept. To people who can't see revolutions happening in front of their own eyes, however, there were many things in today's announcement that are very significant.

Let's take one that was not hardware. Today Apple announced a new opensource format for ebooks. This means that anyone can develop software to support the format. Any publisher can distribute books in the format. Books developed for the iPad can be read using any competing device.

Or, you can whine.
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I'm not whining (since I know the MBP will get updated sometime soon anyways), just basically saying what you said - more happened today than "iPad".
I hadn't noticed the ebook thing (I mildly watched a live blog on the event), but you make a good point on that as well.
 
MisterMe said:
Today Apple announced a new opensource format for ebooks.
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ePub is not an Apple designed format and it's a little over 2 years old now. Some of the criticisms in the Wiki article are interesting to read. Of the devices listed, iPad is the only name I recognize.
 
It should be noted that PA Semi was a secretive company even before their purchase by Apple.

That’s probably why they picked them. They weren’t ones to share their processor designs like some of the other ARM companies.

I would almost bet money that this new A4 chip will be at the heart of the next iPhone, iPod touch and maybe even Apple TV, clocked appropriately for each device (of course).
 
Gathered a few interesting articles from around the web about this new chip and what folks have discovered so far...

Geeky gadgets

It runs out that the new 1GHZ Apple A4 processor is actually based on a Cortex A9 MPCore processor, which is the same processor used on the new NVIDIA Tegra 2 system.

The Apple A4 chip is made from aCortex CPU, and features an integrated memory controller and a Mali 50-series graphics processing unit.
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Engadget

The chip was apparently manufactured in September of last year!
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Tom's Hardware

Apple's purchase of PA Semiconductor not too long ago, yielded its first product today, but it's not the fact that it was used in the iPad that makes it special. What's special is that Apple now has a real processor on its hands. And in case you're wondering whether or not Apple's own CPU can compete with the likes of ARM's Cortex or Qualcomm's Snapdragon CPUs, the A4 has potential to kick the living shnizzles out of those CPUs.

First, the A4 runs at a 1GHz frequency, which by mobile CPU standards, is quite high. Considering that Qualcomm's 1GHz Snapdragon powers Google's Nexus One, the Apple A4 could power the next wave of super-smartphones. In fact, at its current spec and frequency, the Apple A4 can play back HD video for 10 hours before requiring a full battery charge.
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EDIT- Just found this one:

Bright Side of News NOTE: Apparently this story contains innacurate info so reader beware. Arn has posted a nice summary on the homepage here at MR.

So yes, PA Semi/Apple chip is actually mostly ARM IP. This is quite a logical step to do, given that this is first new piece of silicon that came from PA Semi after the acquisition in April 2008. We'll see if future iterations will have more Apple IP than ARMs, but somehow we doubt it. ARM is the pervasive force in the world of mobile chips, as witnessed by many new players on the market. We could even conclude that Apple logically followed what nVidia had done with their own SoC, Tegra, followed Qualcomm with their Snapdragon, Samsung with their own Cortex-A9 core at 1GHz. BTW, as a small comment - isn't it interesting how everybody is clocking the A9 core to 1GHz [nVidia, Qualcomm, Samsung, Texas Instruments]? This is due to the thermal sweetspot of the core, given that the maximum achievable clock of 1.3 GHz comes with a significant thermal penalty.
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I would like it if Apple put this into the MBP as a co-processor. I had a lot written, but then I realized, what if Apple makes the i7 a co-processor, and uses the A4 as a main CPU. It certainly has the horsepower for mundane tasks like surfing the internet and word/excel. Then, when you need the extra CPU boost, the core i7 powers on. This would also allow the MBP to sleep for great lengths of time, like the PowerBooks could.
 
thejadedmonkey said:
I would like it if Apple put this into the MBP as a co-processor. I had a lot written, but then I realized, what if Apple makes the i7 a co-processor, and uses the A4 as a main CPU. It certainly has the horsepower for mundane tasks like surfing the internet and word/excel. Then, when you need the extra CPU boost, the core i7 powers on. This would also allow the MBP to sleep for great lengths of time, like the PowerBooks could.
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Interesting point. To be honest, with the far better power management in the i-series of chips, especially the later ones, an i-series mobile chip shouldn't be taking much power on standby anyway. Perhaps even almost as little as the A4.

Issue 1. Standby power isn't just about the chip, it's also about keeping the RAM alive. Laptop DRAM is bigger and faster and takes more power than mobile device flash RAM, which is able to sleep on zero power. The laptop mobo also needs some power, as does the Wake-on-LAN feature and whatever else drains some juice.

Issue 2. How would the A4 be integrated? The macbooks are Intel devices, with Intel chip on an Intel mobo. The two form a tightly bound whole. There's no way you'll be able to get an Intel mobo to support an A4 chip, and ditto the other way round - the A4 mobo won't support an Intel chip either. The only way I can see it being done is for each chip to have its own mini motherboard ...

Issue 3. A large part of the power of a laptop or desktop chip comes from it being well fed with data from large and speedy DRAM. Take the DRAM away, and use flash RAM, and the fast chip is basically crippled waiting for data. So you've got to either have DRAM and keep it powered up, draining the battery, or leave it turned off, and have a pause while the DRAM is woken up and filled from the slow flash memory, or not have DRAM at all and cripple the fast chip.

Given all these tradeoffs, it's hardly worth it.
 
MisterMe said:
Comic books? Comic books?! I'm sorry. I'm sure the comic book issue will be resolved.
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Oh I'm sure it will too. But it's interesting that comic books were mentioned. I chuckled when I read that.
 
Macworld's got a nice round up of what's currently known about the chip and a nice history on the PA Semi aquisition and why apple bought them in the first place.

Macworld

It's extremely unlikely that Apple could leverage ARM architecture for the Mac, as those processors are specifically made for low-power devices, not high-performance workstations or general computing. However, if it could make headway through patents and cross-license agreements, Apple may someday be able to do this with another architecture, such as the now-standard x86-64.

While this fits in well with Tim Cook's declaration that Apple believes in controlling the technologies that run its own products, we're still a long way away from returning to the days when a vendor made every single component of the computer by itself. Economically, it doesn't make sense for one manufacturer to have that kind of overhead. That's how prices remain low, and why IBM doesn't produce every single component of the PC all by itself.
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wwooden said:
The chip could possibly be put into the AppleTV as well since it can apparently handle HD video without an issue.
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Definitely. If the AppleTV has a future, it's with Apple's ARM-based silicon.

It would be nice to have an always-on media appliance that doesn't *rival a frackin' space heater* in its energy consumption.
 
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