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Dual-Core A5X iPad 3 Coming Tomorrow with Multiple LTE and 3G Variants?

LOL, no kidding. I just finished upgrading products so that everything is either wired or wireless N. It was nice getting rid of G devices in my apartment. I don't even want to hear anything about AC yet, that'll just give me a headache.

apolloa said:
Christ that's the LAST thing we need, considering how long it took all the manufacturers to finally decide on the wireless N protocols standard! They'll be arguing over AC for another 5 years yet...
Click to expand...
 
dBeats said:
My S.W.A.G...

The A5X goes in the Apple TV 3/HD
The A6 goes in the iPad 3
Click to expand...

IMO, we already know what the PCB looks like for the iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, and all the other Apple kit thanks to iFixit. The PCB's don't indicate which version they are for. We may see A5X now, but when iFixit tears it down it may show something else entirely.

The article itself sounds like regurgitated guesswork that I made on another day.

A5X, is most likely the A5 with either double ram, double GPU or some other improvement that justifies the change in screen size. Just from a logical point of view, when you have 4 times the number of pixels, you need 4 times the amount of memory. To do a properly setup double-buffer OpenGL display context you need a minimum of 25,165,824 bytes which is up from 6,291,456 bytes needed by the iPad's screen. Then you have to consider higher resolution screen assets. Let's assume that a iPad2 game remastered as a iPad2HD game simply increases the resolution linearly. That means the art assets increase by 4 times without considering compression. So it makes more sense to either quadruple the RAM to sustain the same performance expectations, or to double the RAM and halve the performance expectations. The 25MB frame buffer is the minimum required to use the full resolution at full frame rate. But I think we're hardpressed to put 2GB of RAM in that small of space for now.

LTE, I haven't actually checked what VZ and AT&T use, but I figure the first generation LTE networks likely don't overlap enough to have seamless coverage. Voice isn't used on the iPad (though it could be) but I refer you to how LTE is an all-IP network: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP_Long_Term_Evolution

This means that the circuit switched voice used on the 2G networks can't hand over to LTE. So if you start a voice call in 2G, and enter LTE space, you are in fact staying on the 2G network. When you end that call, your phone can then seek out a LTE network for data, but if you decide to place a call, it has to fall back to the 3G network if the LTE network has no voice provisioning. Current LTE devices operate in this CSFB mode, which is why each device needs to support it's own 2G network still. As LTE coverage also isn't yet seamless, 2/2.5/3/3.5G network fallback is required, as Verizon would probably cry bloody murder if they had to pay one cent to AT&T for roaming.
 
kavika411 said:
I have a question for those of you excited about LTE. I ask because I'm curious and trying to learn about this. I don't ask to be snarky.

Are you concerned that LTE will cause you to blow through your data plan? I realize that if all you do is view web pages and such that you may not be more likely to increase your overall data usage. However, if all you do is page viewing it would seem that you wouldn't particularly care about LTE speeds.
Click to expand...

prepaid data plan
 
Tezgah said:
I have been waiting this moment for a while.:eek:
Click to expand...

Tough Eric Schmidt...you'll just have to wait a little longer :p

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dBeats said:
My S.W.A.G...

The A5X goes in the Apple TV 3/HD
The A6 goes in the iPad 3
Click to expand...

I'm not sure the Apple TV will need a new CPU. The current one is perfectly capable of 1080p as evidence by jailbreaking it and running xbmc. It handles it fine.
 
Thanks for breaking that down. I'll probably be going with AT&T despite our love-hate relationship.

A LTE/3G HSPA+ combo sounds awesome. But maybe it'll just be the normal 3G.

xraydoc said:
Verizon - much larger LTE footprint; slower 3G speeds (CDMA) when not in LTE service area. Likely wont work overseas (presuming it's a VZW-only CDMA/VZW-LTE band chipset).

AT&T - much smaller LTE footprint; faster than Verizon on 3G when not in LTE service area. Should work overseas on any GSM 3G network (presuming a GSM/AT&T-LTE band chipset)

And, if rumor is true, there may be a world-mode 3G-only model which would have a GSM/CDMA world radio like the iPhone 4S but no LTE mode.


The rumor suggests there's room in the iPad 3 for ONE radio chipset: A VZW CDMA/LTE version, an AT&T GSM/LTE chipset, or a CDMA/GSM chipset. I don't know if anyone yet produces a single GSM/CDMA/LTE chip.
Click to expand...
 
rmwebs said:
I'm not sure the Apple TV will need a new CPU. The current one is perfectly capable of 1080p as evidence by jailbreaking it and running xbmc. It handles it fine.
Click to expand...

it is more on that reason that Apple TV not concerned with the power requirement.

but for apple they want to have new CPU in this order iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and then at last the Apple TV. Just for marketing purpose.

but for practical purpose it should be this way, Apple TV, iPad, iPod touch and then iPhone.
 
rmwebs said:
Tough Eric Schmidt...you'll just have to wait a little longer :p

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I'm not sure the Apple TV will need a new CPU. The current one is perfectly capable of 1080p as evidence by jailbreaking it and running xbmc. It handles it fine.
Click to expand...

Are you sure? I have not had that kind of luck. I try and stream (hard wired, no wireless) full 1080p movies via xbmc on the Apple TV2 and it stutters. I've tried several movies. Seems like it'll accept 720p max for clean playback.
When I use the Western Digital Live Plus box instead, there is no stutter, works just fine.
 
Now is the time too add more RAM, definitely. The Android lovers out there laughed at iDevices with only 512mb of ram. But this was actually ridiculous. The Xbox 360 has 512mb ram, and look at the games on that. The PS3 has 256mb ram and 256mb VRAM, look at the games on that too..

And now the PlayStation Vita, again with 512mb Ram (Plus a little VRAM, to be fair) and the games on that are so much better than anything on any phone or tablet. Current games and applications at the resolutions provided on today's devices do not need more than 512mb RAM, not by a long shot.

However When you suddenly increase the display resolution to 2048x1536... well then it makes sense. A lot of sense, infact, i'm not even sure 1GB will be enough for such a resolution. Developers would have to render the game at a lower resolution, which would look ugly, I don't think Apple would like that. I wouldn't be surprised to actually see more than 1GB.
 
Misaki said:
IMO, we already know what the PCB looks like for the iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, and all the other Apple kit thanks to iFixit. The PCB's don't indicate which version they are for. We may see A5X now, but when iFixit tears it down it may show something else entirely.

The article itself sounds like regurgitated guesswork that I made on another day.

A5X, is most likely the A5 with either double ram, double GPU or some other improvement that justifies the change in screen size. Just from a logical point of view, when you have 4 times the number of pixels, you need 4 times the amount of memory. To do a properly setup double-buffer OpenGL display context you need a minimum of 25,165,824 bytes which is up from 6,291,456 bytes needed by the iPad's screen. Then you have to consider higher resolution screen assets. Let's assume that a iPad2 game remastered as a iPad2HD game simply increases the resolution linearly. That means the art assets increase by 4 times without considering compression. So it makes more sense to either quadruple the RAM to sustain the same performance expectations, or to double the RAM and halve the performance expectations. The 25MB frame buffer is the minimum required to use the full resolution at full frame rate. But I think we're hardpressed to put 2GB of RAM in that small of space for now.

LTE, I haven't actually checked what VZ and AT&T use, but I figure the first generation LTE networks likely don't overlap enough to have seamless coverage. Voice isn't used on the iPad (though it could be) but I refer you to how LTE is an all-IP network: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3GPP_Long_Term_Evolution

This means that the circuit switched voice used on the 2G networks can't hand over to LTE. So if you start a voice call in 2G, and enter LTE space, you are in fact staying on the 2G network. When you end that call, your phone can then seek out a LTE network for data, but if you decide to place a call, it has to fall back to the 3G network if the LTE network has no voice provisioning. Current LTE devices operate in this CSFB mode, which is why each device needs to support it's own 2G network still. As LTE coverage also isn't yet seamless, 2/2.5/3/3.5G network fallback is required, as Verizon would probably cry bloody murder if they had to pay one cent to AT&T for roaming.
Click to expand...

I agree.
 
I bet on X!

I bet on Quadcore. How would it make sense to keep the same processor and double the RAM? I bet that 5X means not the new nm achitecture for the processor - hence a "A5" with an "X" which resembles the 4 as it has 4 prongs. Enhanced versions with Apple usually had an "a" or an "S" behind it. So, how would it make sense to use practically the same CPU on-die (I am not talking about GPU etc on the die) if you double the RAM and so on? Yes, I get the 4x display real estate and the needed RAM upgrade, I'm all for it! Just I see that the core number is relevant as well, if not more so. We are talking about physics effects in racing games or the Unreal engine. To keep the heat down, 4 cores are almost a must.

In other words, I hope for y'all that I am right. I will stay with my iPad 2 for now (my wife would kill me otherwise :eek: ).
 
iSee said:
Now that makes sense.




I know you're joking, but I think people who want the best possible iPad should actually want dual core not quad core.

Quad core isn't free:
* Those cores cost money and consume space and power. So quad core makes the iPad more expensive and either makes the iPad bigger/heavier or makes the battery life shorter (or some combo of the two).

That's OK if you get a better iPad... but do you?

For a quad core to pay off, you need to be doing three or more computationally intensive things at one time. (And things for which a dedicated coprocessor doesn't exist.)

But how often does that really happen?

iOS and well written general apps do a lot of things in the background. But these are mostly I/O operations or things for which dedicated coprocessor exist (like decoding sound files during playback). It's hard to see a general use for more than two cores here.

Games are different. You can easily see a need for more than two cores: e.g., consider scene management, A.I.+pathfinding, physics/environment simulation.

I guess it depends on what you want to get out of your iPad.
But it doesn't seem worth it to me personally to pay the price of quad core to get some richer high-end games. (It's not easy to write games that effetively use four cores, so it's mainly going to only be the highend games that can do this.)

Anyway, that all just educated speculation on my part. It will be interesting to see what comes out tomorrow. I'm going to stick with my 1st gen iPad in any case.
Click to expand...

four cores don't weigh noticably more than dual cores - CPU weighs a few grams max.

four cores in theory is more efficient on battery as the cores can work to finish tasks more quickly and then idle.

four cores will be great for high end games, but I agree there aren't (currently) many that push the ipad evelope
 
I want enough grunt under the hood to push the increased resolution with at least ipad 2 level games - polycounts etc, and enough ram to support higher resolution textures and better caching of tabs in the browser.
 
Mad-B-One said:
I bet on Quadcore. How would it make sense to keep the same processor and double the RAM? I bet that 5X means not the new nm achitecture for the processor - hence a "A5" with an "X" which resembles the 4 as it has 4 prongs. Enhanced versions with Apple usually had an "a" or an "S" behind it. So, how would it make sense to use practically the same CPU on-die (I am not talking about GPU etc on the die) if you double the RAM and so on? Yes, I get the 4x display real estate and the needed RAM upgrade, I'm all for it! Just I see that the core number is relevant as well, if not more so. We are talking about physics effects in racing games or the Unreal engine. To keep the heat down, 4 cores are almost a must.

In other words, I hope for y'all that I am right. I will stay with my iPad 2 for now (my wife would kill me otherwise :eek: ).
Click to expand...

I like the sound of this! (except the last sentence about listening to his wife - where tech is concerned, forget Tony Danza, I'm the Boss).
 
commerceguild said:
Separate iPad models, that makes no sense for me. Apple tried to combine the different iPhone models and released the iPhone 4s "worldphone". Why should they release a new iPad "and make the same "mistake" in producing serveral models.
Click to expand...

yes and no. even though the 4S is a world phone it's carrier locked. and they sell different sku's for different carriers.

I would bet this a carrier choice that Apple is conceding to.

----------
samac92 said:
Does anyone think that Apple maybe using the A5X for the iPad and the A6 for the next iPhone so that the iPhone is the first to get the new processor every year? Currently the iPad ships with a faster processor that makes the iPhone look outdated for over 6 months. As the iPhone is Apple's biggest product, I'd imagine they'd want it to appear to have the best specs with the iPad following a few months later.
Click to expand...

I think the A6/iOS aren't ready yet is all. It makes no sense to stick a quad in there if 2 of the cores rarely have anything to do. People way smarter than me assure me that numbers of cores are arm are not the end all be all.
 
Mad-B-One said:
I bet on Quadcore. How would it make sense to keep the same processor and double the RAM? I bet that 5X means not the new nm achitecture for the processor - hence a "A5" with an "X" which resembles the 4 as it has 4 prongs. Enhanced versions with Apple usually had an "a" or an "S" behind it.
Click to expand...

Read over A5S very quick, what does it say? Exactly. ;)

(Hint: your rear end)
 
I believe that Apple sees the iPhone as the entitled first born child; iPhone 5 will be the first to get quad CPU.

I also believe that the new iPad will be called iPad 3.

But what do I know...


See y'all here tomorrow when all shall be revealed.
 
I realize that a quad core isn't important but apple needs to realize that the general public will be influenced by crap android tablets with 4 cores.

This is about to be Apple Power PC vs Windows Intel market all over again :/
 
Best Ans in least words.

snowmoon said:
Data protocols, yes.

Frequencies, No
Activation, No
BS bureaucracy, No
Obscene fees, No
Click to expand...

Only if my corporate e-mails were like this... (less words but a lot of useful info).
 
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