not for the 5S, it will most likely be used either w/ the new cheap version iPhone or the iWatch or maybe both
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Smaller A5 Chip From Tweaked Apple TV Contains Only One CPU Core, Revamped Analog Circuitry
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not for the 5S, it will most likely be used either w/ the new cheap version iPhone or the iWatch or maybe both
As opposed to chips they already have in production? Why would they spend the "R&D" money to figure out how to make it smaller when they are already cranking out a ton of these puppies for a variety of different devices....
Seems a little off to me. Plus, I don't see the iTV happening anytime soon, so I guess that's why I find it harder to believe.
I think the iWatch makes PERFECT sense.
I'm definitely feeling the iWatch / cheaper iPhone vibes here.
It would be very odd of Apple to put so much R&D into a shrunken single core A5. The Apple TV is the only product they have that uses a single core A5 and it's not exactly their bread and butter.
It would be very odd of Apple to put so much R&D into a shrunken single core A5. The Apple TV is the only product they have that uses a single core A5 and it's not exactly their bread and butter.
not for the 5S, it will most likely be used either w/ the new cheap version iPhone or the iWatch or maybe both
I hadn't thought of this, but maybe....though I'm skeptical how much savings a newly designed single-core A5 chip provides given the drop in performance over their standard A5 which would fit perfectly fine in a thicker, cheaper iPhone.
You guys are reading too much into the word "Analog".
All electronics circuits are analog. There is no such thing as a pure digital signal, it is just how its interpreted. All power and ground supplies are analog, all high-speed gigabit transmission paths are in +/- pairs and are much more analog than digital in how they are handled in board routing, impedance matching, etc.
Every circuit trace has capacitance and impedance, no voltage is stable enough to be 100% to an exact level at all times.
Hence, chips have analog function hardware... most often in the I/O drivers for transmit and receive logic on each pin, as well as for filtering power, powering on / off sections of the chip, and for Phased Lock Loops which are heavily used in microprocessors / SOCs.
Analog does not mean they are hooking up speakers or ancient technology directly to the chip. In-fact that would be a bad idea.
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Actually, while you just stated it indirectly, that is a good point... there are multiple devices using the chip... what happens when there aren't? A5 is used on older designs. Maybe the single-core A5 Apple-TV is about to be the only thing left using the A5 processor in a few months. Why keep building a larger CPU than needed?
All electronics circuits are analog. There is no such thing as a pure digital signal, it is just how its interpreted. All power and ground supplies are analog, all high-speed gigabit transmission paths are in +/- pairs and are much more analog than digital in how they are handled in board routing, impedance matching, etc.
Every circuit trace has capacitance and impedance, no voltage is stable enough to be 100% to an exact level at all times.
Hence, chips have analog function hardware... most often in the I/O drivers for transmit and receive logic on each pin, as well as for filtering power, powering on / off sections of the chip, and for Phased Lock Loops which are heavily used in microprocessors / SOCs.
Analog does not mean they are hooking up speakers or ancient technology directly to the chip. In-fact that would be a bad idea.
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Actually, while you just stated it indirectly, that is a good point... there are multiple devices using the chip... what happens when there aren't? A5 is used on older designs. Maybe the single-core A5 Apple-TV is about to be the only thing left using the A5 processor in a few months. Why keep building a larger CPU than needed?
Considering the sheer number of A5 chips inside iPad minis and iPad 2s, I see this more as an engineering exercise than anything else.
I'm not sure I follow....
They didn't need to shrink the A5 down for the AppleTV....there was plenty of room there. And unless they decided to pour money in R&D for a redesigned "hobby" project, I'd say the iWatch is almost certainly the cause of the redeisgn of the A5.
Especially if they will be moving away from the A5 in everything else (which, given the latest generation iPod touch and iPhone 4S still use the A5, I doubt).
Na, if it was for a watch they'd be stacking the memory chip like before; but they aren't. They are using an external RAM chip.
I bet you both the Mini and older iPad model this year will be A6 based.
The only product having an A5 will be the Apple TV.
(Maybe they will start using the A5 in their adapters as well, such as the HDMI adapter that was recently torn down)
Why would they shrink it down? A 50% die reduction is probably a huge chunk of the fabrication cost of the CPU. I don't remember what the A5 costs, but say they got the cost down from $20 to $12 or even $11... that is a significant savings on the bill of materials for an AppleTV.
There are tons of Internet streaming devices out there that are much more capable than the AppleTV, at least as a stand-alone device.
But why would they go to all the trouble (and R&D spend) to bring the cost down on a product they don't sell many of to begin with?
I only read they didn't stack in the AppleTV because there was no need given the space....perhaps they know the modifications to the A5 won't affect the stacking process and decided not to worry about it?
You're forgetting the iPod touch and iPhone 4S run on the A5 as well. I agree that the mini will have an A6 and the 4th gen iPad has an A6X, meaning we'll likely see an A7X in the newest iPad.
Perhaps the cheaper iPhone will also have this A5 - I could see lowering the fab cost for something that needs to be cheaper and that they likely plan on selling by the boat load.....I just have a hard time believing it will have a single-core chip given I believe the next iPhones and iPads will move to a quad-core design.
I'm not so sure Apple would use this chip in a cheaper iPhone. iOS 6 is already lagging pretty bad on pre [dual core] A5 devices. Plus it would make app development more difficult.
Maybe also an updated Time Capsule and Airport Express using the chip? The GPU would be wasted. But I believe both products are based on ARM already.
Again, revisiting the HDMI converter... they currently decompress the HD video in software... the A5 has hardware decoding; they could be using it for an updated adapter that has higher quality.
That could all be correct.
Newer, i.e. top of the line, phones will either be dual or quad core. However, if you want to offer a lower cost iPhone, then lets say the 4S, you may then go this route. Cut you processor costs by almost half and the revamping of the circuitry could possibly get better performance or battery life out of the circuit. Until they figure that out its anyone's guess.
It could be a way to release a newer cheaper model without making a crappy/cheap looking phone and destroying the brand. Separate RAM could also allow them to add more independently (off the chip) to also help performance vs, the cost of the RAM onboard with the dual processor. I believe the article said that there still was dual GPU's. So graphics performance wouldn't change.
Um, why? The CPU of a single core A5 chip is about as fast as a 10 year old G4 Mac. The only reason it can get away with it is that it has a powerful GPU for hardware compositing and because it has hardware video decoding. Apple probably has precisely as powerful a CPU as they need and no more.
Still collecting my thoughts on a possible iWatch. It could be awesome, but at the same time I feel like it's something Apple wouldn't be too interested in. Whatever it is, I hope they make it so it's tolerated my employers as a fancy watch and not a smart phone alternative and so allowed in the workplace.
Ya that makes sense.
Though the iPhone 5 has triple-core graphics if I'm not mistaken. The GPU is the least of Apple's worries given they're always leading the pack in that area.
iWatch, obviously.
That is a very good possibility. That would especially be the case if this design can be shrunken to sub 32 nm processes.
There has to be some explanation for Apples design effort here. While some may not think Apple TV represents enough volume this could be a stepping stone to processors supporting other devices.
Beyond that I'm wondering if there is the possibility of mixed process sizes here. Maybe the analog features are 32 nm and the GPUs and CPUs are drawn in at a sub 32 nm design rule. Of course we have no idea about magnification but those two elements just look denser on the chip.
This does highlight one thing though, I've been saying for a long time that GPUs are more important than CPUs, this just highlights that fact. Apple choose to keep the GPUs around instead of the extra CPU cores.