Everything iPad

According to Steve Jobs, the iPad is a revolutionary and magical piece of technology. And while someone else may think that’s not exactly right, after thinking about the potential of the device, and now hearing about the A4 processor a little bit more in detail, we might have to agree with him. Thanks to Venture Beat, a little bit more light has been shed on the processor, what it’s capable of, and how on Earth it’s capable of doing it at all.

We’ll go ahead and give you the quoted text, so that you can mull it over on your own. If the A4 processor is indeed capable of accomplishing what Apple has obviously set it up to accomplish, and can do it in such a way that our fingers don’t melt off in constant usage of the tablet, we’re even more sold on it than we were before. (And you can imagine how sold we were to begin with.)

“PA Semi achieved something to write home about just as Apple defected to Intel: a 65nm 2Ghz, dual powerpc core processor that maxed out at 25 watts. That was supposedly tantamount to witchcraft, and an explanation I’ve seen for it was that PA Semi was able to break it up into a large number of smaller ‘power domains’ (if that was the term..), allowing them to keep more of the chip either at lower frequency or turned off completely. I also recall reading that this was extremely difficult.

“The A4 story, really being whether it has much of an advantage over arm + graphics + … chips of the same generation (whether A8 or A9), hinges on whether Apple’s PA Semi talent and IP worked all that much magic compared to what e.g. TI or Qualcomm already achieved.

“That’s probably THE question to ask your Apple sources: how much PA Semi is in there, and how much better is that? They were previously the best of the best, does it still show in this new context?”

If the chip is indeed crafted as that first paragraph mentions, it’s no doubt that Apple has put something amazing in their tablet. In fact, it just shows how much the iPad is capable of doing, right out of the gate.

“Apple has invested heavily in OpenCL and LLVM, which are technologies to distribute work across multiple CPUs and multiple GPUs. In this Apple is different than other mobile devices: other vendors want video decoding and 3D games at a good rate, but often leave the GPU mostly idle.

“Apple is looking to drive a lot of work through the GPU all the time, as part of any application. For Apple, it makes sense to put a lot of GPU cores in the chip. It even makes sense to put in so much GPU that the chip would overheat, but throttle back the ARM clock speed to leave more thermal envelope for the GPUs to run.

“Speculating, I’d say choice of GPU the biggest draw for building their own chip. Merchant silicon will be designed for the mainstream market, and Apple is ahead of the mainstream in this.”

It’s also no surprise that the GPU is the center of attention. Apple has shown with their previous mobile products, like the iPhone and iPod Touch, that unlocking the GPU and using its resources can provide an amazing experience for users. Other products, like Palm’s Pre, are just beginning to understand that, so it’s good that Apple is still focusing in the right areas.

But, there’s an update to the story, as they included at the end of their article.

“PA Semi didn’t do the A4. It was the existing VLSI team. Apple has made custom chips for years like the Northbridges for G4 and G5.”

Truth be told, it looks like Steve Jobs might not have just been preaching about his latest piece of tech. It’s looking more and more like he knows everything, and the rest of us just have to start taking in the rest of the information in little snippets, such as this. We’ll all get a better understanding of what the iPad is fully capable of here in a few months, but it’s articles like this that make us want one right now.

[via Venture Beat]