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Apple A4 processor in iPhone prototype has 256MB RAM - Page 3

post #81 of 87
5/13/10 at 12:55pm
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Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

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Originally Posted by fishbert View Post

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Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post

iFixit got an extremely close look at the A4 soon after the iPad launched in April, when they, along with Chipworks, X-rayed and dismantled the chip based on the ARM architecture.

No, they didn't... they dismantled and cross-sectioned the iPhone's processor, not the iPad's A4.
This is widely mis-reported, but is plain as day to anyone who reads the actual article from iFixit.

How would dismantling the 3GS tell them what is in the iPad?

Is Chipworks lying?
"What we found was an APL0398 chip, presumably the next-generation processor from the APL0298 that we found in the iPhone 3GS."


SEM Cross-Section of Apple APL0398 http://www.chipworks.com/Apple-iPAD-Teardown.aspx

I didn't say anyone was lying, just that many (including AppleInsider) were misreporting.

See here: AppleInsider vs. iFixit
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post #82 of 87
5/13/10 at 2:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Parkettpolitur View Post

Fair enough. I'm not sure the situation is THAT similar, though, since the Cortex A8 was really brand new when they put it in the 3GS last year, and even if it's still fast this summer, it won't really be king of the hill anymore. The phones that came out in Q4 2009/Q1 2010, i. e. the Droid and the Nexus one, mostly featured higher clocked Cortex A8-based processors. The difference to the 3GS was negligible. However, the difference between the A4 and the multi-core Cortex A9 will most likely be vast. At least that's what I'm fearing.

Well, the difference might be big, but that's life in the cutting edge tech market. Something faster will always come along, and once in a while there's a big push. But right now, in June 2010, there's nothing faster available, so what should Apple do? It's not like every one else is putting faster chips in their smartphones, not for like 6 more months. And once Cortex-A9 will become widely available, you won't have to wait longer than a few months until the next iPhone is released, which will at least catch up to the fastest smartphones out there.

And by the way, I'm really skeptical that multicore Cortex-A9s will be used in lots of smartphones in H1/2011, the power requirements are pretty high @40nm/45nm. IMHO H2/2011 @32nm is when they become really usable.

PS: The Droid is not faster, and the Nexus One 3D performance is lower. Looks like the first phone that's gonna be faster in every (theoretical) aspect is gonna be the Samsung Galaxy S (S5PC110, 1GHz Cortex-A8, SGX540), and I'm not sure if it's gonna be available before the 4th-gen iPhone (depends on it's release date in June/July).
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post #83 of 87
5/13/10 at 3:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike11 View Post

Well, the difference might be big, but that's life in the cutting edge tech market. Something faster will always come along, and once in a while there's a big push. But right now, in June 2010, there's nothing faster available, so what should Apple do? It's not like every one else is putting faster chips in their smartphones, not for like 6 more months. And once Cortex-A9 will become widely available, you won't have to wait longer than a few months until the next iPhone is released, which will at least catch up to the fastest smartphones out there.

And by the way, I'm really skeptical that multicore Cortex-A9s will be used in lots of smartphones in H1/2011, the power requirements are pretty high @40nm/45nm. IMHO H2/2011 @32nm is when they become really usable.

PS: The Droid is not faster, and the Nexus One 3D performance is lower. Looks like the first phone that's gonna be faster in every (theoretical) aspect is gonna be the Samsung Galaxy S (S5PC110, 1GHz Cortex-A8, SGX540), and I'm not sure if it's gonna be available before the 4th-gen iPhone (depends on it's release date in June/July).

OK, you've pretty much convinced me; I didn't know the A9s were so far off.

However, that doesn't excuse the 256 MB RAM (if that turns out to be a reality).
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post #84 of 87
5/13/10 at 4:53pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by fishbert View Post

I didn't say anyone was lying, just that many (including AppleInsider) were misreporting.

See here: AppleInsider vs. iFixit

What are the misreporting? They posted the wrong image? That is quite different than "they dismantled and cross-sectioned the iPhone's processor, not the iPad's A4." which I shown to be incorrect as their site clearly shows evidence of the iPad's A4 being dismantled and cross-sectioned, unless you claim is that they are in fact lying.
Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"
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Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"
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post #85 of 87
5/13/10 at 5:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike11 View Post

PS: The Droid is not faster, and the Nexus One 3D performance is lower. Looks like the first phone that's gonna be faster in every (theoretical) aspect is gonna be the Samsung Galaxy S (S5PC110, 1GHz Cortex-A8, SGX540), and I'm not sure if it's gonna be available before the 4th-gen iPhone (depends on it's release date in June/July).

The specs look impressive, but so did the Nexus One. We're at a point in computing that you can't just look at the HW and say which one will be a better or faster experience, as you're well aware with your "theoretical" qualifier.

Surely Android v2.2 will get more refined to make the Nexus One perform closer to the 600MHz 3GS in some tasks but it's hard to compete with Apple who is refining the HW to to the OS to the UI with polished deftness.

They also have the numbers to make it worthwhile and inexpensive compared to other vendors. Apple will sell 1 million plus in the first weekend and the Samsung Galaxy S with a reported $1000 price tag will be lucky to sell half that in its lifetime. How many units has the Nexus One sold?

I recall reading that the 7 month only 3GS on the UK's forth and smallest carrier sold more units than the Nexus One in that same general time frame. Android will surely top the iPhone OS in sales on all smartphones, but I can't foresee any single vendor making a device as well oiled as the iPhone without risking an excessive amount of R&D on a phone that they haven't been able to sell in great quantity.
Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"
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Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"
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post #86 of 87
5/13/10 at 6:31pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by solipsism View Post

The specs look impressive, but so did the Nexus One. We're at a point in computing that you can't just look at the HW and say which one will be a better or faster experience, as you're well aware with your "theoretical" qualifier.

Surely Android v2.2 will get more refined to make the Nexus One perform closer to the 600MHz 3GS in some tasks but it's hard to compete with Apple who is refining the HW to to the OS to the UI with polished deftness.

They also have the numbers to make it worthwhile and inexpensive compared to other vendors. Apple will sell 1 million plus in the first weekend and the Samsung Galaxy S with a reported $1000 price tag will be lucky to sell half that in its lifetime. How many units has the Nexus One sold?

I recall reading that the 7 month only 3GS on the UK's forth and smallest carrier sold more units than the Nexus One in that same general time frame. Android will surely top the iPhone OS in sales on all smartphones, but I can't foresee any single vendor making a device as well oiled as the iPhone without risking an excessive amount of R&D on a phone that they haven't been able to sell in great quantity.

Of course, I was only talking about pure hardware specs and theoretical performance. That says nothing about how good the user experience is gonna be. You could combine a 2GHz Cortex-A9 quadcore with a shitty OS and the user experience would be terrible even though the hardware would be like 10 times more powerful than anything else out there...

Regarding Android OS(!): IMO the iPhone OS offers the best user experience right now, but I think with OS 2.5/3.0 at the latest (or whatever major version comes after 2.2), Android is gonna be as user friendly and well rounded as the iPhone OS so that I could equally recommend the two OSs to even my technophobic grandfather and it would really just be a matter of personal preference.
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post #87 of 87
5/14/10 at 1:24am
Quote:
Originally Posted by shank2001 View Post

You can use http://analyze.websiteoptimization.c...vices/analyze/ to check the size of any website you want. Nytimes.com comes in at 411KB by the way. Things like flash are what use the most RAM on desktops, and obviously that is not much of an issue on the iPad .

It looks safari (at least in the desktop version) is taking up more memory than other browsers. I just tried to compare Safari to Firefox on my Mac, and with the some 4 tabs open, Firefox is at 100MB, whereas Safari is at 250MB (though it has been running for a while). However adding a tab or to increases the memory with at least 20-30MB, whereas the same in firefox does only ad a couple of MB.

Any thoughts/explanations for that.

P.S. I believe that the url you posted only gives the size of the html code, not the rendered version of the page.
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." - Albert Einstein
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"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. THAT'S relativity." - Albert Einstein
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