tequila bomb

We had decapsulated the A5 a couple of days ago, but as you could see in those early pictures, you can’t tell much of a chip’s layout from the top metal – it’s all power and ground buses.  So we have to de-layer the chip down to a level where we can see the block layout of the chip; not an easy thing when there’s nine layers of metal!  In fact, these days it’s easier to go in from the back and remove the substrate silicon, and look at the gate level from below.  Then we can identify the circuit blocks that make up the full device.

[W]e’ve labeled the key blocks; the ARM cores are in the right half of the die, with ~4.5 Mb of cache memory each.  We can also see the USB interface at the top, and the DDR SDRAM interfaces at the bottom right, for the memory in the top part of the package-on-package.  Other I/O blocks are strewn around the edge of the die.

Interesting stuff.

We think the A5 is likely not built around Cortex A9 cores, but instead probably uses two [of] the same custom low-power A8 cores used in the A4. If Apple had indeed used two Cortex A9-based cores, raw performance should be more than double that of a single core A8-based design.

This makes a lot of sense. I noted in February that Apple had received custom silicon for what we expected to be the Apple A5. But that it had not had enough time to transition that silicon into iOS (or ongoing iPad 2 manufacture) for an early 2011 launch. So my best guess was that the iPad 2 would ship with an interim SoC. I suggested something like a beefed up A4, with a faster ARM Cortex A8, and a much better GPU most likely making up an iPad 2 specific Apple A4-and-a-half.

To be honest, until someone (iFixit and friends) rips the silicon in the iPad 2 apart and sticks it under a microscope, none of us will have much more than guesses to go on about what exactly the Apple A5 is. But it seems very likely that Apple has made expedient decisions to maximise performance as well as keep battery life gains.

I’ve have always maintained that Apple’s mobile silicon lineup is more than powerful enough in the CPU department, and what it really needed was a kick on the GPU side. Even the CPU in the original iPhone is still very capable. But the GPUs in all current iOS devices are constantly fighting an uphill battle with fill rate.

It remains to be seen if the iPhone 5 will get this Apple A5, or a further iteration.

A nice little roundup of what most people think the iPad 2 will offer…

• Dual Core ARM Cortex A9 CPU.
• POWERVR SGX543 GPU (with Open CL).
• No Retina Display, but a less reflective screen more suited to eBook use.
• Front and Rear Cameras similar to the iPhone 4′s.
• Gyroscope.
• More RAM.
• Smaller, lighter, thinner – especially the screen.
• NFC capabilities (maybe).

I am hopeful of the “full monty” Apple A5 making an appearance in the iPad 2. i.e. Dual Core ARM Cortex-A9, and the all singing all dancing Imagination Technologies’ POWERVR SGX543 GPU, with OpenCL support and superb OpenGL ES capabilities – approaching OpenGL 3.x in actual fact. But I am still concerned that the silicon was only available to Apple very late last year. So we may be disappointed, or get one half of the full deal.

But all in all I think the collection of rumours Jonny Evans has gleaned from all the usual Apple web sites are pretty solid.

You can take it to the bank that all of the Apple A5 related goodies outlined above will certainly be the core of the iPhone 5.

Oh, one more thing: I don’t think the iPhone 5 will be called by that name exactly.

AMD’s own internal database of games tells them an interesting story: the average slot utilization is 3.4 – on average a 5^th streaming processor is going unused in games. VLIW5, which made so much sense for DX9 vertex shaders is now becoming too wide, while scalar and narrow workloads are increasing in number. The stage is set for a narrower Streaming Processor Unit; enter VLIW4.

As you may recall from a number of our discussions on AMD’s core architecture, AMD’s architecture is heavily invested in Instruction Level Parallelism, that is having instructions in a single thread that have no dependencies on each other that can be executed in parallel. With VLIW5 the best case scenario is that 5 instructions can be scheduled together on every SPU every clock, a scenario that rarely happens. We’ve already touched on how in games AMD is seeing an average of 3.4, which is actually pretty good but still is under 80% efficient. Ultimately extracting ILP from a workload is hard, leading to a wide delta between the best and worst case scenarios.

Very interesting reading the reasoning behind the switch from VLIW5 to VLIW4.

MacBook models with screen sizes of 13 inches and below are expected to switch to Sandy Bridge-only graphics, while higher-end MacBook Pros are expected to use graphics from Advanced Micro Devices, according to sources. Whether Nvidia will still be present in higher-end models is unclear.

Sandy Bridge is a watershed processor for Intel because, for the first time in a mainstream product, the graphics chip is grafted directly onto the main processor, boosting performance, while essentially providing the graphics function for free. And the step up in performance may be enough for Apple to rely on Intel’s graphics in some lower-end MacBooks.

Seems very unlikely to me. Intel has not got a good past history of delivering on GPU performance  promises.

Anyone remember how unpopular the GMA 950 IGPs from Intel were? I am not sure Apple want to go through that pain again. Their customers certainly don’t. Nor are they particularly happy with the current GPU restrictions imposed by Intel on much of Apple’s product line.

AMD is a likely shoe in for more components in future. And not necessarily just GPUs.

Apple’s plan for the future is most definitely to be as silicon agnostic as possible. It should be any manufacturers aim at this point in our industry’s history. For that reason I think Apple is likely to keep more manufacturers on tap, rather than less. Dropping NVIDIA means that they are less likely to be there in the future for Apple’s future needs.

Right now Intel are still being coy about how far they plan to go with OpenCL support. Without that any deal arrived at out of choice is simply not going to happen with Apple.

They’re at it again…

Apple does not publish in depth technical details of its iOS devices. Necessitating developers to root around in system files to find out specifics on the silicon inside by themselves. Asking Apple to confirm which specific GPU is inside an iPhone for example, or exactly how much RAM it has on board is likely to get a standard reply with no technical insight whatsoever.

Often it is web-sites like iFixit (and their “partners in crime”) who break the first details on the silicon inside Apple’s iDevices. At other times it is developers who filter the information out to us all, once they have got their hands on new hardware, and can run low level c functions to snoop at physical memory, or other more esoteric OS components.

One very good reason why Apple might obfuscate detailed hardware info is simply so that they can revise specifications in the future. As long as those changes in specifications don’t damage the end user experience, break existing apps, or undermine developers efforts, then there really is no harm in it. It happens all the time with consoles and handhelds as the manufacturing of components matures over a products lifetime.

A few iPhone 4 users are reporting that some system snooping apps are reporting their devices as only having 256MB of Physical RAM. These are later device models, purchased recently and running a current public version of iOS. Original iPhone 4s, such as mine, running iOS 4.2 still report 512MB of Physical RAM.

In every day use I rarely see my iPhone 4 drop below 200 – 240MB of free RAM. And I wonder if Apple has noticed the same.

So I am curious. Has Apple quietly dropped the iPhone 4′s specs to 256MB of Physical RAM? Or is something else going on here?

#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/sysctl.h>

static size_t phys_mem()
{
 int mib[] = { CTL_HW, HW_PHYSMEM };
 size_t mem;
 size_t len = sizeof(mem);
 sysctl(mib, 2, &mem, &len, NULL, 0);
 return mem;
}

What does this code report for you on your iPhone 4?

Another great teardown from the iFixit geeks.

Apple apparently doesn’t want you inside this thing. They decided to use 5-point Security Torx to attach the lower case.

Apple really don’t want you going inside this thing. And are walking a fine line between giving you the perception that this is a computer, but hoping that you will be cajoled into treating it more like an iPhone or an iPad. i.e. A use and replace piece of gear. Rather than a use, optionally expand, and then replace laptop.

[T]he 64GB flash storage board can be disconnected from the logic board. It would be easily user-replaceable if you disregard the strange 5-point Torx needed to get inside.

That is good to know. A lot of people will be interested in sourcing larger storage from a third party, if at all possible. I know I will. Not being a huge fan of Apple’s “memory” tax.

Despite being crippled in the CPU department, because of Intel’s stupid stance on integrated GPUs, the MacBook Air (particularly the 11 inch model) is finally a worthy replacement for my long in the tooth PowerBook G4 12″.

If I didn’t have the luxury of having both an iPad and my various Macs for work, then I would choose an Air over an iPad as my main portable computer. So I can see some people choosing between these two flavours of devices in an Apple store. Therefore it’s possible that the Air may well cannibalise iPad sales to a small degree, at least in the more geeky Apple demographic.

3DS is powered by twin ARM11 CPUs clocked at a relatively meagre 266MHz, while overall system storage (sans SD card) is 1.5GB. Onboard RAM is 64MB, with 4MB of video memory. DMP’s PICA-200 graphics chip is said to be running at a relatively lightweight 133MHz.

That’s two CPUs from the original iPhone running at a combined speed which is slightly less than its original single ARM11 was running at.

The GPU is a classic, in many ways. Classic as it has some neat hardware features I have noted before. But also because it is old. And under-clocked.

The RAM is the same as shipped in the original iPhone too.

But the VRAM is a fraction of what iPhone devs. got to play with on the 2G.

This is a typically quirky Japanese peice of hardware. I wouldn’t mind playing with one. Three chips is always more fun than two!

But it will take work to get anything epic out of this thing.

Designed using Samsung’s 45 nanometer low-power process technology, Orion features a pair of 1GHz ARM Cortex A9 cores, each comes with a 32KB data cache and a 32KB instruction cache. Samsung also included a 1MB L2 cache to optimize CPU processing performance and provide fast context switching in a multi-tasking environment. In addition, the memory interface and bus architecture of Orion supports data intensive multimedia applications including full HD video playback and high speed 3D action games.

With a little bit of tweaking by “PA Semi” and “Intrinsity” this is going to be the Apple A5.

Using an enhanced graphics processing unit (GPU), the new processors are capable of delivering 5 times the 3D graphics performance over the previous processor generation from Samsung.

**The GPU was supposed to be OpenGL 3.x compatible, and from PowerVR (at least in the Apple A5). But it is possible that Samsung, and therefore also Apple are considering a Mali GPU from ARM.

Orion features an onboard native triple display controller architecture that compliments multi-tasking operations in a multiple display environment. A mobile device using the Orion processor can simultaneously support two on-device display screens, while driving a third external display such as a TV or a monitor, via an on-chip HDMI 1.3a interface.

The iPad 2 & iPhone 5 are going to be rather special.

**It is worth noting that it is possible that Apple are planning an interim speed bump to the Apple A4, which may or may not be called the A5. Pushing a dual core mobile GPU to the moniker A6. In that case the A5 may well be single core and sport the PowerVR GPU.