iPhone4 A4 Chip - does it clock according to demand?

[reservedegotist]

As the subject says...I couldn't find anything conclusive about the A4's performance, especially in regards to whether it smartly clocks its speed based on the phone's need for more processing power.

Any insight is appreciated - Thanks!

 

[bigreat]

vitually every modern processor can(through hardware or software[monitoring]) auto scale clock speed... according to demand.

BTW, why do you care, you won't notice anything anyway. As the multitask, just use it..............

 

[reservedegotist]

Because I'm curious.

I never complained anything about real-world performance now did I? I know iOS runs smoothly.

 

[MassiveAttack]

Without a doubt iPhone 4's A4 chip is underclockwd. Put head to head with other devices iPhone 4 clearly lacked in speed. Not by a big margin but definitely slower than other devices with comparable processors.

 

[fishmoose]

Without a doubt iPhone 4's A4 chip is underclockwd. Put head to head with other devices iPhone 4 clearly lacked in speed. Not by a big margin but definitely slower than other devices with comparable processors.

It's only fair to compare it to the iPad since no other devices then the iPad and the iPhone 4 has the Apple A4.

 

[MassiveAttack]

It's only fair to compare it to the iPad since no other devices then the iPad and the iPhone 4 has the Apple A4.

Any device with a 1ghz processor can be compared to the iPhone 4 A4 chip. The iPad isnt iPhone competitor or isn't even in the same class device wise.

 

[sleyeu]

Any device with a 1ghz processor can be compared to the iPhone 4 A4 chip. The iPad isnt iPhone competitor or isn't even in the same class device wise.

same shiz inside though

 

[JulianL]

As the subject says...I couldn't find anything conclusive about the A4's performance, especially in regards to whether it smartly clocks its speed based on the phone's need for more processing power.

Any insight is appreciated - Thanks!

No one knows for sure because Apple tends not to talk about this stuff but I'd say that the basic clock frequency will be downclocked vs the iPad (maybe 800MHz) and that within the chip there will also be significant downclocking from the 800MHz (or whatever) baseline depending on load.

I'd bet on dynamic downclocking with > 99% certainty because it's common practice now and I don't think there's any way that Apple would be getting the battery life without doing this. What is more interesting is what else they might be doing in terms of stopping the clock entirely for unused portions of the chip or even powering down individual elements. Apple have been buying semiconductor design companies with expertise in these areas and I would guess that a big percentage of their design modifications are targeted at reducing power consumption.

It's an area of huge interest to me too. I'm hoping that, in the same way as Apple just made a spectacular enhancement to their screen resolution in one big leap from 3GS to 4, at some point Apple will really innovate in power consumption and do something like double the battery life between generations rather than the 20% or 30% increases that we've seen so far. Apple have control of all aspects of the design and very significant in-house resources for custom silicon design so I think that Apple are one of the best-placed companies to do this.

- Julian

 

[fishmoose]

Any device with a 1ghz processor can be compared to the iPhone 4 A4 chip. The iPad isnt iPhone competitor or isn't even in the same class device wise.

Not really, there's to much to a CPU then GHz these days. The architecture of the silicon is more important then GHz.

 

[cdd543]

Without a doubt iPhone 4's A4 chip is underclockwd. Put head to head with other devices iPhone 4 clearly lacked in speed. Not by a big margin but definitely slower than other devices with comparable processors.

Funny that my iP4 is faster at almost every task than my incredible running a 1 gig snapdragon processor. Internet, any common app and even directions in maps. The only place the incredible won was opening maps, but iphone got directions faster.

 

[reservedegotist]

Funny that my iP4 is faster at almost every task than my incredible running a 1 gig snapdragon processor. Internet, any common app and even directions in maps. The only place the incredible won was opening maps, but iphone got directions faster.

From what I hear, at least in the EVO, the video performance is limited to 30fps (running stock w/o rooting and modifying). It might be the case it's actually an OS software limitation instead if it's happening to the Incredible.

The A4 chip though has definitely been great so far; the battery life is also nice but it's hard to tell how much the A4 contributed to that change, since the battery itself grew larger. I hope one of the tech blogs could analyze it