“A funny thing happened on the way to the coliseum” … as they say
In April we published
an article on Apple’s A5 ….
where we concluded …. “Bold is the only word that can be used to describe Apple’s A5. It was bold to design such a large device. Certainly the CPU+GPU combination is significantly larger than the comparable portion of the A4. However, this is only the beginning of the story. Going beyond these basic elements leaves an additional 34 mm2 or 64% of the whole A4 die. Yes there are very likely additional IP cores there, but there might also be some clever custom design that leverages Apple’s integrated approach.” In early June a post appeared in a Barron’s blog, quoting a new report ….
The end of the post sure looks familiar … I guess we share the same view. “And one last gem, a mystery: Gwennap notes that about 33 square millimeters of the A5 is extra circuitry that can’t be accounted for. It’s not the CPU, it’s not the GPU, it’s not any kind of integrated functions, such as wireless controller logic, etc., as all of that stuff is still external to the processor, as it was in the A4.” Then the comments came in to Barron’s….
