Photo of iPad 3 Logic Board with "A5X" System on a Chip

[Tortri]

Oh Apple,

I hate seeing posts like this because I plan to get the iPad 3 regardless of what they do or don't do with it but seeing a half upgraded CPU is like a ipad 2 tom cat loud meow at night as oppose to the expected ipad 3's Mountain Lion's Roar!

I hope this was a prototype that was made "just in case" the A6 didn't come through.

 

[cwwilson]

A5X, A6, who cares? This thing is going to blow people's minds.

 

[kmanmx]

Higher clocked A5 with Apples Macroscalar tech ?

 

[hotcocoa]

Apple will not muck up the product line with a release like this.

What about:

iPad3:
Retina, 32GB, A5X (dual core A15), Siri, white or black; 499, w/LTE 629
Retina, 64GB, A5X (dual core A15), Siri, white or black; 599, w/LTE 729

iPad2:
No-Retina, 8GB, A5, black; 349, with universal 3G 449

 

[ABadSanta]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/9A406)

To all those talking about "how powerful" the iPad 3 is going to be, you are missing the point of this post!

A5X is implying that this WONT be an A6 chip and thus not quad core. If this is true, which I'm thinking it could be photoshopped, then this is a big negative.

I'm still buying one, but I'll be jelous when the quad core A6 version comes out a year later and blows the A5X iPad 3 out of the water in speed.

A big negative? Dual core chips are plenty fast, especially if this is going to run at a faster clock speed than the current A5 chip.

And how do you know a quadcore A6 chip will "blow the A5X iPad 3 out of the water in speed"? It's not all about cores, you know...

 

[ramuman]

i bet u apple "leaks" those parts on purpose to give the media something to talk about

I don't think they even have to intentionally. There is enormous speculation that everywhere along the supply chain, there's incentive to leak these things.

Also, Jobs' ego was enormous - probably bigger than even what you can gather in the Issacson biography. My advisor in grad school knew him reasonably well and gave me a framed copy of a picture of them, Bob Noyce, Tom Perkins, and a few others having lunch together in the 80s a few weeks after Jobs died. Jobs pretty much had to be the center of attention apparently and he hated being upstaged so I honestly don't think a Jobs' Apple would intentionally spoil their own show - and they don't have to. Just the right amount of information likely leaks out on its own.

 

[Wilder]

 

[damir00]

What about:

Looks about right. Maybe 16GB on the bottom end iPad2.

 

[SteveAbootman]

At the end of the day, does the device create the experience I as a user come to expect from Apple? Surely they know this is the standard people judge them by (and not whatever they choose to name the SoC they're using) and have done the architectural work necessary with to maintain that level of trust in their customer base.

 

[D.T.]

And how do you know a quadcore A6 chip will "blow the A5X iPad 3 out of the water in speed"? It's not all about cores, you know...

They don’t. There’s a slew of people on this board (and this thread specifically) that know little-to-nothing about processor architecture (and how it relates to power consumption , performance, the OS, etc.)

Image

Awesome.

At the end of the day, does the device create the experience I as a user come to expect from Apple? Surely they know this is the standard people judge them by (and not whatever they choose to name the SoC they're using) and have done the architectural work necessary with to maintain that level of trust in their customer base.

Great assessment. Dual/quad/clock/threads/cores ... at the end of the day will an iPad 3 give me an outstanding experience from the display quality to the [perceived] performance? If the answer is yes, it’s a winner.

 

[Bubba Satori]

"If its not a quad core A6 then I wont buy it" complaints commence in 3... 2... 1...

No, with you.

Winning.

 

[Rocketman]

This product release reminds me of the Macintosh II FX. An EOL unit with extreme CPU, graphics, and display capacities. The next step (030) was incremental, but just like the PMG5 it had a bunch of overlap in performance and capabilities, to serve for a full product cycle (Core). I see those features in this iPad release.

I wonder if the iPad 4 will have the new much lower nm and much higher density Intel stacked design to give the unit 4x the capacity of the A5X in a smaller and lower power form factor! And incidentally, Samsung free.

Rocketman

 

[pgiguere1]

Guys, stop complaining about the lack of quad-core. The best dual-core right now is better than the best quad-core.

You have to take architecture in consideration, otherwise your logic is as flawed as saying that a 2.2GHz Pentium is better than a 2.0GHz Core i5.

Right now, the best dual core we could make would be based on the Cortex A15 architecture.
The best quad core we could make would be based on the Cortex A9 architecture.

Dual Cortex A15 > Quad Cortex A9
As simple as that.

You should be happy that it's not a quad core, now let's just hope that it's not a dual Cortex A9, since that would mean no upgrade at all.

 

[wilycoder]

Thats not quite how GPUs work.

Actually, for the PowerVR GPUs that apple uses, yes, it is.

 

[lewis82]

So many people complaining that it's not quad-core and that they will wait next year since it will be.

You should wait until 2014, as there will probably be an hexa-core chip then. Oh, but again maybe wait until 2015, I hear they are going to go to 8 nm process which should allow faster speeds...

 

[bit density]

really. why would apple call this a 2s? i dont care about names, but the upgrade is so big that i cant imagine apple calling it a 2S. rather 3, and a 3S later.

Because this is a line extender, not a line replacer. Expect cheaper iPad 2's than today, and more expensive ones than today. Me I am hoping for a nice 16g iPad2x for the same price as an Ipad2 today. I hope. It will definitely get me to buy. I don't expect this to be my music library replacer, and I don't walk around with a bunch or any movies on this, so I simply am not going to need to be carrying THAT much content or apps. But I want's me some retina display as this is what I will be getting for my ereader, and for a bunch of other sorts of content consumption and light social gaming.

There will be people that want more and will pay for it, and those that will accept less, and won't have to pay as much, and the 3x kindles results will be lessened, and the market will expand....

Ipad3 is next. But it may be a long way off. Not because of technology, but because of need. The xbox and ps3 are very toothy, and the demands are much higher on those machines. I suspect that the iPad3 will be driven by battery technology, communication technology, and lastly by core technology. Next year's machine are more likely to be just cooler, better battery life and smaller/thinner for the most part. And if anything, faster and more interesting gfx tech. I think you may well see a similar lineup, but it will all be smaller thinner and last longer, for about the same price.

 

[rmwebs]

I still think the following will happen:

Base model will be an iPad2, basically the iPad 2 with a boost (hence the A5X). It'll be 16GB.

Upper models (32gb and 64gb) will be the iPad 3 with an A6.

Kind of how they went with the iPhone by keeping the 3Gs on sale.

The reason I think this is a possibility is because the cost of the new screen and other changes would obviously increase the costs, and Apple generally never increase the price when a new model is released, they just introduce higher end ones, then eventually discontinue the low end ones and cut the high end prices (again, like they did with the 3G).

 

[Menel]

Unless that chip has some kind of cover on it it looks fake.

Heatspreader. We could be talking a real heater here.

 

[pmau]

I still think the following will happen:

Base model will be an iPad2, basically the iPad 2 with a boost (hence the A5X). It'll be 16GB.

Upper models (32gb and 64gb) will be the iPad 3 with an A6.

Kind of how they went with the iPhone by keeping the 3Gs on sale.

The reason I think this is a possibility is because the cost of the new screen and other changes would obviously increase the costs, and Apple generally never increase the price when a new model is released, they just introduce higher end ones, then eventually discontinue the low end ones and cut the high end prices (again, like they did with the 3G).

Unlikely ... Apple does not change existing models, and I'm sure they don't release two iPads ...

 

[rmwebs]

Unlikely ... Apple does not change existing models, and I'm sure they don't release two iPads ...

Given that we've only had 2 ipad releases in total, we dont know that.

Of course my post is entirely 'this could happen' and I have zero evidence to back it up, but its mainly taking into account the increased build cost that the iPad 3 will obviously have. Also, given how Apple have openly said that things are going to change, I dont expect the traditional release format to stay around much longer.

 

[rovex]

Of the what?

Of the something that's set to be half as much as the iPad yet apparently twice as powerful.

 

[Warbrain]

What about:

iPad3:
Retina, 32GB, A5X (dual core A15), Siri, white or black; 499, w/LTE 629
Retina, 64GB, A5X (dual core A15), Siri, white or black; 599, w/LTE 729

iPad2:
No-Retina, 8GB, A5, black; 349, with universal 3G 449

Still a disaster.

 

[Menel]

I still hold that Quad CPU would be overkill, heater, battery drain, silliness for iOS apps/games.

I was betting on dual A15, quad PowerVR...
Now... Maybe not, maybe same dual A9 but with quad PowerVR.

Either is good, but oh please be A15... ! =X

 

[trunten]

really. why would apple call this a 2s? i dont care about names, but the upgrade is so big that i cant imagine apple calling it a 2S. rather 3, and a 3S later.

I'm with you, although I'd go further and say I hate these incremental name updates. Can it not just be an iPad that just gets better over time like my iMacs have?

 

[Peace]

I see a lot off people here have forgotten the older days when everybody was complaining about no Powerbook G5.

ahh...The irony.


I do agree with some about the myth of cores. If anybody can make a killer ARM processor it's Apple. They did help with designing one of the first ARM processors. They are no slouch when it comes to designing the best ARM chip.