iPad Tech Specs: Cortex A8, 256MB Ram, PowerVR SGX 535

[AidenShaw]

Did you know a "router" which uses IOS (Cisco's realm) can be run with 128mb and hold the whole BGP internet table while routing Multicast/Unicast traffic + 2 millions packet per second while doing deep packet inspection....with a CPU thats only 400Mhz!!

That's because the CPU in a big Cisco router never sees an IP packet. ASICs at the port level are working on the packets - the 400 MHz CPU is setting up the tables and control parameters, and orchestrating dozens to hundreds of ASICs.

Exactly analoguous to the TiVo - the dedicated MPEG engine is doing the encoding/decoding, the CPU is coordinating.

(My Cat4 switches with SV-10GE supervisors have 800 MHz CPUs with 512 MiB, though, to support 136Gbps throughput and 102 Mpps. And, they can only address 128,000 routes at a time.)

 

[ksgant]

here we are again, watching people just looking at the specs of something instead of actually using it. Have heard people putting it down for reading books with "well, it has an LCD, that's just not as good as E-ink for reading" instead of using it. Now we have "oh, it only has 256megs of RAM, that's not enough" "oh, it's only using one core...that's not enough".

If you look at the specs all day instead of actually trying it out, of course it's going to fall short. Also, the opposite phenom happens when you get something with stellar specs on paper, but then it just of doesn't live up to those specs at all.

Just use it. Stop being geeks for 5 minutes.

 

[NT1440]

Your argument is 256mb is better than 512mb. Just LOL.

Are you one of the fanboys who said the original ipod touch didn't need speakers?

Twist, what twist?

Yea man, what twist?

 

[Compile 'em all]

256MB of Ram doesn't leave much room for background processing, should the iPhone OS ever support it.

The Xbox 360 has 512 MB of RAM.

You guys have no clue what is good and what is bad.

 

[tdream]

Yea man, what twist?

The extension of logic. As in Apple do everything right all the time, always.

 

[littlegreymen12]

That's because the CPU in a big Cisco router never sees an IP packet. ASICs at the port level are working on the packets - the 400 MHz CPU is setting up the tables and control parameters, and orchestrating dozens to hundreds of ASICs.

Exactly analoguous to the TiVo - the dedicated MPEG engine is doing the encoding/decoding, the CPU is coordinating.

(My Cat4 switches with SV-10GE supervisors have 800 MHz CPUs with 512 MiB, though, to support 136Gbps throughput and 102 Mpps. And, they can only address 128,000 routes at a time.)

Ouch...someone went to deep..I was trying to dub it down for this guy..hate to hurt your feeling but Im not going to bash you on this one

 

[inlovewithi]

Wow. Just wow. You guys are a bunch of absolutely clueless noobs. Talk to any mobile developer and they will tell you that 256mb of ram on a phone is a lot. Before the iPhone came out most phones had a small fraction of what the original iPhone had (128mb).

When developing for phones and embedded systems, you have to think about memory, processor and battery life constraints when developing software. You cannot just port a desktop app over to a phone and expect it to work.

You might see phones coming out with more than 256mb of ram but that will probably be an indicator that the platform is inefficient and that the coding standards/API are weak when it comes to memory management. Android is an example of this where Google took the linux OS and did a rush job on the software. There is a lot of code in android that has no place on a phone platform and that extra bloat uses ram which slows down the UI and execution of programs.

As others have indicated already, the PS3 only has 256mb of ram and it plays complex games. Devs on the iPhone platform who target both new and earlier generation devices like the iPhone 2G have to work within less than 128mb of ram and load resources on the fly. Games like Hero of Sparta and N.O.V.A work on both machines that have only 128 mb ram and newer devices like the iPhone 3GS and iPad.

If you are going to use that flash to iPhone converter, you might run into problems but if you develop native apps, you will know to load resources as you need them instead of at once like the flash games do.

If Apple were to have released the iPad with 512MB of ram then you all would be complaining that the iPhone is getting left behind when developers started getting lazy and only coding for the iPad rather than optimizing the code to run on both platforms. You guys will always find something to whine about.

People were expecting the iPad to be more powerful than a phone, not the specs of a phone with a larger screen.

 

[tdream]

Im just stating the facts...If only people understood technology **sigh**

P.S. Didnt even know the Touch didn't have a speaker and my girlfriend has one lol..Guess I assumed it did.

It does, the 1st gen didn't.

It's not hard to understand 512MB>256MB.

And why has no one referenced my argument about the cost? It only costs Apple $5.95 to add the extra memory which would of made it REALLY magical

 

[rhett7660]

The extension of logic. As in Apple do everything right all the time, always.

I am sorry, I didn't read that at all in the post you we are referencing. Really where did it say that. The person was merely stating how much ram was needed to handle the kind of traffic one might encounter with a cisco switch/router. Now you are saying just because apple didn't put 512 megs of ram and the fact some here are agree that it isn't needed you are labeling them a fanboy. Does this sound about right?

 

[kernkraft]

Frequency?

Kenneth?


I'm back, but what a change of weather...

I still think that I didn't say anything that would not be true.

 

[NT1440]

The extension of logic. As in Apple do everything right all the time, always.

Do you not even understand what that guy was talking about?

His statements said nothing about 256 somehow being better than 512, yet you boldly proclaim that he has, and laugh at him for it. Thats twisting words my friend.

 

[cmaier]

People were expecting the iPad to be more powerful than a phone, not the specs of a phone with a larger screen.

Given that benchmarks show the iPad at about 2x the performance of an iPhone 3GS, I guess they got what they expected.

 

[inlovewithi]

It does, the 1st gen didn't.

It's not hard to understand 512MB>256MB.

And why has no one referenced my argument about the cost? It only costs Apple $5.95 to add the extra memory which would of made it REALLY magical

For every million iPads sold, that $5.95 = 5,950,000 extra dollars. Smart on Apples part, since with the media hype and the fanboys, they're not going to care about the ram.

 

[Surklyn]

Well that's really the point after all.



Getting OT now, but many companies don't try to maximize profit in an absolute sense. If all companies did then none would contribute to charities, give educational grants, or fund nonprofits that work for ecological or social causes. In fact I bet Apple does some of those things.

Corporations receive huge tax incentives for donating to charities/nonprofits and social causes. All which affect the bottom line in a positive way for their shareholders.

 

[kernkraft]

"Losing money"?!

RAM costs are estimated around $11.90 for 4GBits which is 512MB. Since the iPad really only has 2GB it costs Apple $5.95, so for a saving of 5 dollars and 95 cent, they could of made it really ******* good.

This just shows you how tight are.

I have been looking for this! Yes, you are right that they calculated with more RAM, but they might have also had the price of the Cortex A9, although, I'm not absolutely certain.

 

[OzExige]

It does, the 1st gen didn't.

It's not hard to understand 512MB>256MB.

And why has no one referenced my argument about the cost? It only costs Apple $5.95 to add the extra memory which would of made it REALLY magical

There you go

for what it's worth (either way)

 

[inlovewithi]

Given that benchmarks show the iPad at about 2x the performance of an iPhone 3GS, I guess they got what they expected.

I was responding to the OP (Don't know if that was you) who was making the argument that 256mb if perfect, because it's similar to other phones. So since he was comparing it to a phone, I commented that people were expecting more than a phone with a larger screen, from the iPad.

 

[Nostromo]

Hate to tell you but everything in this world is outdated before it hits manufacturing Again, Wish people understood technology !

Any technical product has to be set up for production.

Research is always a few steps ahead, no matter if hardware or software.

From the macrumors article it seems that Apple hasn't developed a fully new design, but based it on another processor. The way the article was written it sounded like the A4 was a derivative design.

Understandable, as the development cost of new processors are astronomical.

For Apple it probably saves cost and maximizes profit and does so at the cost of being cutting edge technology.

When Intel sells their newest processors, they are, of course, not outdated when they hit the market (even though they are, of course, already working on the next generation of processor, or maybe even at the second next, and planning further ahead).

So, coming back to your little quip quoted above, I'm not too impressed with your claim of technical knowledge.

Such claims are used by people who like to show off, but have no arguments at their disposal.

 

[Rocketman]

The iPad is the most polarizing thing in the US since Obama. I mean, look at all these crazy posts that take the time for every article to come and denounce it. Its amazing.

Seriously, which one of these people who hate this device, if it had come out with 512 or 1024 MB of RAM would have declared, "Oh I think it is a stupid toy, but now that it has 512 MB of RAM, I am getting one."

Or if the processor was based on the multicore A9 would have changed their mind.

We all know the answer. Something about the iPad gets under the skin of alot of people who feel the need to share it at every opportunity - even on a Mac enthusiast site. Every spec is just one more thing for them to harp on. I think it might be the sense of betrayal they feel because the NEXT BIG THING was totally different than they envisioned.

The RAM in the iPad is about as relevant as the RAM in my thermostat. I have an iPhone and reading this article was the first time I knew how much RAM it had. It had never occurred to me to wonder that. I understand why these specs are relevant on a known quantity like a desktop computer, but for an optimized OS on a specific device, its not clear to me at all.

Americans have a cultural bias toward gross overcapacity. Some of us drive hummers in urban areas for commuting and grocery shopping when 99% of what we do is well done with a Honda Civic.

We live in houses far larger than our needs with all the associated maintainance energy, expenses, and labor. We are a wasteful lot.

When someone comes along and optimizes a system of hardware, software, services, and technology, to a stated range of tasks, the majority of people point at the spec sheet and say in utter horror, but it cannot do 99-500, only 0-75. Yes I know my needs now and forseeable are 0-50, but I have cash in my pocket burning a hole and I want to buy 250!

Steve has a minimalist perspective at one level, but an insanely great perspective on the other. He does not feel compelled to achieve insanely great by throwing the maximal amount of resources at the problem.

In fact, precisely the opposite.

Rocketman

 

[allendsmeet]

"The World's Biggest Mobile Company"

"Bigger than Nokia, Sony, and Samsung"

MOBILE PRODUCTS:
MacBook Pro - 300 days since refresh. 100 days obsolete.
MacBook Air - 300 days since refresh. 45 days obsolete.
iPhone - 300 days since refresh. 122 days obsolete.

DESKTOP PRODUCTS:
Mac Pro - 397 days since refresh. 161 days obsolete.
LCD Panels - 1,096 days since refresh. 866 days obsolete (2.37 YEARS).

Apple has no love for all its adoring masses, hungry as they are for table scraps from 256MB-equipped iPads.

I've been and will continue to be an Apple loyalist. I've sold several million in Mac hardware going as far back as the 90's when most of MacRumors.com users were Anti-Apple and Pro-PC. But this is ridiculous. There is no excuse for Apple's complacent take towards their core product lines. It's almost as if they want to see what they can get away with. Obviously anything.

 

[AidenShaw]

Ouch...someone went to deep..I was trying to dub it down for this guy..hate to hurt your feeling but Im not going to bash you on this one

Not sure what you mean.

• The TiVo has a fairly wimpy PowerPC CPU - but it has a powerful MPEG encoding/decoding chip that does all the heavy lifting.
  
• A Cisco Catalyst has a fairly wimpy (often PowerPC, don't know about the SupV) CPU - but has powerful dedicated ASICs in the supervisor and line cards.
  
• The Ipad has a good (but not the latest) ARM CPU - and a good GPU and who knows what other accelerators in the "Apple A4" custom silicon.

I wasn't disagreeing with your point about the Cisco - I was trying to reinforce the point that it's the whole system, and not any single component, that defines the experience. It's not just the OS, though. The Linux OS in the TiVo could never encode/decode multiple MPEG streams in realtime with the wimpy PowerPC - it's the OS leveraging the ancillary hardware to its fullest. The 800 MHz CPU in the router couldn't do 100 million packets per second without the ASICs.

 

[miketheannoyed]

The thing could give you a massage with a happy ending but the spec sheet jockeys will always complain about one spec or another.

It would be pretty strange if I spent $500 on a machine that's supposed to be a mix between a phone and a netbook, and got a massage with a happy ending

 

[littlegreymen12]

errr wrong direction

Any technical product has to be set up for production.

Research is always a few steps ahead, no matter if hardware or software.

From the macrumors article it seems that Apple hasn't developed a fully new design, but based it on another processor. The way the article was written it sounded like the A4 was a derivative design.

Understandable, as the development cost of new processors are astronomical.

For Apple it probably saves cost and maximizes profit and does so at the cost of being cutting edge technology.

When Intel sells their newest processors, they are, of course, not outdated when they hit the market (even though they are, of course, already working on the next generation of processor, or maybe even at the second next, and planning further ahead).

So, coming back to your little quip quoted above, I'm not too impressed with your claim of technical knowledge.

Such claims are used by people who like to show off, but have no arguments at their disposal.

I was just saying...

He said: the processors outdated
I said : of course it is...everything's outdated before it comes out (thats the technological world we live in thanks to the aliens )

Didn't mean to say anything more than that and wasn't trying to show off..

Hope that helps

 

[littlegreymen12]

oops

Not sure what you mean.

• The TiVo has a fairly wimpy PowerPC CPU - but it has a powerful MPEG encoding/decoding chip that does all the heavy lifting.
  
• A Cisco Catalyst has a fairly wimpy (often PowerPC, don't know about the SupV) CPU - but has powerful dedicated ASICs in the supervisor and line cards.
  
• The Ipad has a good (but not the latest) ARM CPU - and a good GPU and who knows what other accelerators in the "Apple A4" custom silicon.

I wasn't disagreeing with your point about the Cisco - I was trying to reinforce the point that it's the whole system, and not any single component, that defines the experience.

Oops, I have to say sorry for this one..Guess I am still heating up over this debate I missed alot of what you typed in the response..

So yes, Your right in your statement and diff platforms work diff etc..Was really just dubbing it down for him.

 

[kernkraft]

Wow. Just wow. You guys are a bunch of absolutely clueless noobs. Talk to any mobile developer and they will tell you that 256mb of ram on a phone is a lot.

As others have indicated already, the PS3 only has 256mb of ram and it plays complex games.

If you are going to use that flash to iPhone converter, you might run into problems but if you develop native apps, you will know to load resources as you need them instead of at once like the flash games do.

If Apple were to have released the iPad with 512MB of ram then you all would be complaining that the iPhone is getting left behind when developers started getting lazy and only coding for the iPad rather than optimizing the code to run on both platforms. You guys will always find something to whine about.

1.) "...bunch of absolutely clueless noobs..." Thanks for all the respect. Don't worry, I will not treat you like you treated us.

2.) 256MB might be OK on a phone, but we are talking about something else. Or are you suggesting that the iPad is like the iPhone, only with a larger screen, more weight, no GPS on the wifi version, no camera and no phone function?

3.) the PS3 has 256+256MB. The graphics has a separate module, if I'm right.

4.) Let's not even mention Flash, I would suggest. It's painful enough already.

5.) It's nice to know that the iPad will be kept in the same performance band as the iPod Touch/iPhone group.

6.) About the whining... We wouldn't whine, if we had nothing to whine about. If we wouldn't whine, there would still be no Blu Ray on $3000 Mac Pros.

People were expecting the iPad to be more powerful than a phone, not the specs of a phone with a larger screen.

Actually, the real RAM for apps is less than the late-2009 iPod Touch and the iPad has to drive more pixels.

Yes, we need to stop comparing this to netbooks and compare it to other tablets.

Jobs started it. The '$500 Apple netbook junk' speech, do you remember? Then the Keynote, again slagging off netbooks...

But some people find it hurtful, if you compare the iPad with the iPod Touch.

So what can we compare it with?