New iPad Analysis - Performance, 1GB RAM, Much larger battery

[StefSSU]

Anand of AnandTech has posted an article with the first detailed analysis of the new (third generation) iPad. The article lists the new iPad's A5X SoC as a Dual-Core Cortex A9 (possibly at 32nm, 28nm or still 45nm) with PowerVR SGX 543MP4 Quad-Core graphics as speculated. More interestingly, he believes that the new iPad has 1GB of memory, although was unable to confirm. This falls in line with many reasonable rumors and expectations.

Anand goes on to theorize potential performance of the new device, comparing to the iPad 2 and other devices, and provides detailed impressions of the new Retina display. Additionally, the article states that the (2012) iPad has a significantly larger battery at 42.5Wh versus 25Wh for the iPad 2.

Anand is an extremely reputable source and the full article is recommended for a great first impression of the new iPad's hardware and his thoughts on it.

Analysis of the new Apple iPad - AnandTech

 

[Ryan1524]

I find this very interesting.

...After extensive analysis on GPU speeds and tests...

With the new iPad's Retina Display delivering 4x the pixels of the iPad 2, a 2x increase in GPU horsepower isn't enough to maintain performance. If you remember back to our iPad 2 review however, the PowerVR SGX 543MP2 used in it was largely overkill for the 1024 x 768 display. It's likely that a 4x increase in GPU horsepower wasn't necessary to deliver a similar experience on games. Also keep in mind that memory bandwidth limitations will keep many titles from running at the new iPad's native resolution. Remember that we need huge GPUs with 100s of GB/s of memory bandwidth to deliver a high frame rate on 3 - 4MP PC displays. I'd expect many games to render at lower resolutions and possibly scale up to fit the panel.

 

[StefSSU]

I find this very interesting.

Yup, definitely something to think about. Memory limitations will likely prevent graphics heavy apps from rendering natively. For reference, the PSVita has (probably) the same GPU, yet many of the games have been shown to run at less than it's native 960x544 display resolution, such as Uncharted: Golden Abyss. If professional devs with those kinds of resources are struggling to render 3D visuals at the Vita's resolution then it seems very doubtful that games on the iPad could do much better, if at all. It's still an incredible GPU for a mobile device, Apple are certainly leading the pack here, but it's not really enough yet for native resolutions.

That said the Vita has only 512Mb of RAM, whereas the new iPad likely has double that. I don't think this will be very significant in terms of running at native resolution though - the bottlenecks will be in bandwidth and pure performance, at least when dealing with 3D.

Think further along the line though, the next iPhone will probably have this exact chipset, maybe at a lower process node if it's currently still at 45nm. That should really enable high quality graphics at native 960x640. And eventually tech will catch up to where even the iPad's native res is feasible. With ARM's next generation A15, Nvidia's Tegra's, etc as well as Intel's latest efforts this is a very exciting time for mobile devices. Combine all that with what I personally think will be the next big thing - tactile displays ala Senseg and we've got a lot to look forward to in the post-PC world.