The Apple iPad is powered by a SoC (System on a Chip) that is an in-house product from Apple. Of course, it was fabricated somewhere else, because Apple does own a fab. It was possibly Samsung, who does this sort of things. But that is besides the point. The point here is the fact this chip as important to Apple’s future plans as is the iPhone OS 4.0 that has not been released yet.
This 1GHz chip is called the A4 by Apple. That naming, it’s power efficiency and clock speed makes us think that Apple has made this chip based on the designs it licensed from ARM. It could be the Cortex A9 that has the ability to push well past 1GHz, on paper at least. It was most definitely built by the star team of engineers of PA Semi, the company that Apple acquired not too long ago. It was well-known at that point that Apple all really wanted from the company was that star engineering team and they have been working on this ever since.
So why is it so important to Apple? Well, let’s look at the market for a moment. The only 1GHz chip being used by handheld device makers is the SnapDragon chip made by Qualcomm. That too is an ARM chip. What can it do? It can give you great phones like the Droid, the Nexus One and the soon to arrive XPERIA X10 and HTC Bravo (rumored and leaked). It gives the mobile OS a much deserved performance boost and the results show.
If you look around the web for the opinions of those who have actually handled the iPad, you will notice that they are all praising the smoothness and the response of the UI. According Chicago Sun-Times’ Andy Ihnatko — dragging an image across the iPad’s screen is like dragging something in real life — the response time is that good. Putting the UI through a mad volley of gestures one after another apparently cannot slow the thing down, it still acts as if you’re moving real objects. The videos seem to tell as much.
You know that is because it’s a light OS running on an extremely capable processor. But there’s more to the iPad than that. Have you tried watching HD videos on your netbook? It simply won’t work. Your netbook will cough and splutter like an old asthmatic on his deathbed to keep up with multi-tabbed browsing. It will slow down and crash on you. The iPad? It goes on as if nothing’s the matter. It will really make video watching a treat for you.
That and the great UI/app animations requires major graphics muscle. So the A4 is not just an 1GHz chip, it is also a very capable SoC that has great graphics without guzzling battery juice by the gallons. The 10 hours battery life might turn out to be unrealistic, as is usual with companies but even 8 hours is a fantastic up time.
Now that this thing has such great graphics and video performance with such a speedy UI, guess what is coming to the iPad? Great handheld gaming! I mean this device, with that screen and HD capability, is definitely making game developers drool. To be able to fill up that screen real-estate with an immersive RPG (my bias) or an FPS or RTS or some MMO, must be hard to resist. And we don’t want them too. Let’s have more ports of great table top games that sucked out so many hours of our lives. So many pleasurable hours filled with fond memories. Let’s bring that back, especially on this eminently shareable screen.
The A4 also allows for future growth potential and I am certain that there’s a massive headroom for iPhone OS 4.0 to play in. With this chip in hand, Apple might be looking to beat back the development taking place around NVIDIA’s Tegra, which is currently inspiring a lot of tablets. That is because this is likely better than Tegra at performance and energy-saving. Thus, this might be a great step forward for Apple if only terms of components used.
