No, it's not. The die shots already show a tri-core design just like A8X. Go to beyond3d if you want to verify. I don't know why I keep reading people repeating this info, it appears to have derived from intel fans who seem unable to comprehend that Apple can outperform them on perf/w and on a per-core basis.
Here is the discussion. It gets rather technical but somewhere in that thread a guy points out the L2$ on A9X and the corresponding cores (there are 3).
Can you link directly to the post? I don't remember any confirmations on a die shot or cache amount for the A9X in that thread.
Why is that a good thing? The tri core in the A8X an be optimised for at the same time the quad core could be.
I'm not going to read a 19 page thread all over again to find a single quote just to prove something that will be proven for me in a couple days when this thing is released and geekbench shows 3 cores. It will literally be hours before you know for a fact it's tri-core. If I'm wrong it will only be a very short time for me to be proven so (which won't happen) and then you'll have plenty of time to gloat.
I doubt they'd go quad core as you've said as well. They're focusing on beefy GPUs AND they have most likely increased the clock speed along with many other changes to the architecture. Only thing that interests me is if they use TSMC exclusively.
In fact, I've followed that thread since its beginning, and I don't remember seeing any die shot or confirmed information about the L2 cache of the A9X in the thread.
