A look into Apple iPad’s A4 processor

applea4-sgThe Apple iPad is out and everyone is talking about it.  But, no one has really taken a moment to realize something.  Apple has created their own processor for the iPad, the new A4.  So what is the A4?

According to AppleInsider:

The Apple A4 is based mostly on intellectual property from ARM reference designs. The new, custom chip from Apple, through its purchase of fabless chip designer P.A. Semi, includes the Cortex-A9 MPCore (identical to the processor in the nVidia Tegra and Qualcomm Snapdragon), a ARM Mali 50-series GPU, and a memory controller all on one die.

“The A stands obviously for Apple, and the difference between the Samsung processor inside the iPhone 3Gs and A4 is the clockspeed and the core type,” the report said. “A4 runs at 1GHz while the chip on iPhone 3GS works clocked to 0,6GHz. This is one of main reasons why iPad can deliver a lively interface compared to stale iPhone one.”

It will be interesting to see where this processor winds up down the road in more of Apple’s product line.

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