A6 has an Arm Cortex-A15?!

[quagmire]

An A-15 would be absolutely spectacular, and possibly one of the most under-rated things in the phone yet. However the fact Apple didnt really push it front and center during the presentation makes me feel its more likely a quad A-9. Hope thats wrong.

They never push that it is based on an ARM Cortex core. When they introduced the A4 they never said it was based on the A8 or when they introduced the A5 it was based on the A9. But, what they did say for the A5 was that it was dual core. If it was a Quad Core I would think they would state it. The fact that they didn't makes me think it is still a dual core design. I also don't think a simple die shrink and a small bump in clock speed on an A9 core would make the A6 that much faster and power efficient over the A5 as Apple is claiming.

I am hoping for A15 and what Apple has stated so far supports the hype around the A15( faster and more power efficient). Next weekend will be interesting when everyone gets a hold of the 5 and tears it apart.

 

[thadoggfather]

yeah i dont think they can pull it off with a higher clocked A9 either for 2x performance. I like your reasoning

 

[zhandri]

yeah i dont think they can pull it off with a higher clocked A9 either for 2x performance. I like your reasoning

+ battery life would be too low with an overclocked chip

 

[PedroDias]

since the last iphone had a 0.8 ghz clock and the a15 offers a 50% greater performance I'm guessing the new processor has a 1.2 ghz clock. what do you guys think?

 

[blufire95]

No, same or lower clock...GHz is not everything

 

[cynics]

Is the 2x improvement over the 4s? If so it'll be light years ahead of my 4!!!

Won't matter, Apple supports 2 previous gens so the OS itself will be limited to the lowest common denominator. And devs only want to make apps for the majority (iPhone 4 - 4S). Might be a couple games with higher quality but that's about it.

I really want the 5 just to have the latest and greatest but I think I'm going to wait for the next iPhone (5S?) if I can hold out that long.

 

[cynics]

+ battery life would be too low with an overclocked chip

Not necessarily. Time back to idle helps, so if it uses 75% more power but does things 100% faster then you are saving battery. Another thing is voltage, I have better battery life when I overclocked my Android tablet and undervolted it. Just keep decreasing the voltage until it becomes unstable then bump it up a notch.

 

[Silver Box]

I am hoping for A15 and what Apple has stated so far supports the hype around the A15( faster and more power efficient). Next weekend will be interesting when everyone gets a hold of the 5 and tears it apart.

Yeah me too. Interestingly Ars has also chipped in and agree its likely an A-15.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/what-do-we-know-about-apples-new-a6-processor/

 

[mtj111]

since the last iphone had a 0.8 ghz clock and the a15 offers a 50% greater performance I'm guessing the new processor has a 1.2 ghz clock. what do you guys think?

No, same or lower clock...GHz is not everything

Huh? His point is that clock-for-clock A15 is 40-50% better than A9 - thus they'd need to also bump the clockspeed to get the region of 2x performance.

 

[diamond.g]

Yeah me too. Interestingly Ars has also chipped in and agree its likely an A-15.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/09/what-do-we-know-about-apples-new-a6-processor/

Huh? His point is that clock-for-clock A15 is 40-50% better than A9 - thus they'd need to also bump the clockspeed to get the region of 2x performance.

Folks on arstechnica seem pretty sure that it could be a A9 running at 1.6GHz. That Apple would have made some remark about their CPU using A15 if it were.

 

[fertilized-egg]

Folks on arstechnica seem pretty sure that it could be a A9 running at 1.6GHz. That Apple would have made some remark about their CPU using A15 if it were.

As others have said i believe Apple didn't specify their architecture even when they were using cutting edge chips (Cortex A8 in 3GS and the SGX543MP2 in iPad 2) so that is not really valid. On the other hand it still seems almost unbelievable that Apple took such a leap ahead of everyone with the iPhone 5 considering the sheer volume of production. The guys at Anandtech seem pretty darn sure about it though. We will see.

 

[diamond.g]

On one hand we say Apple is conservative with their tech. On the other we say they like to use bleeding edge tech. In this case I hope it is A15, but am really thinking it isn't.

 

[diamond.g]

So it appears it doesn't use A15...
Anandtech believes it is a custom core