The only reason anyone expected a quad-core is because of marketing. Android Tablet X has quad-core so the iPad needs it! Ridiculous. If Apple sticks to it's typical design philosophy, it will balance performance with battery life. Consider the power requirements the iPad will have with double the pixels, a faster graphics core, and 4G LTE. Why add two more cores and reduce battery life even more just to check off a box on a marketing spec. sheet?
It's the same thing we see with Apple continuing to use 512MB of RAM even though most Android phones and tablets have 1 GB. The focus on the numbers is a throw-back to a specs based design philosophy Apple abandoned long ago much to its benefit. It's all about the total package and user experience. It's a lesson that no Android tablet or phone maker has learned except for maybe Amazon.
A couple things... Quad-core Cortex-A9 are the standard now for this implementation just as dual-core Cortex-A15 will be at the end of the year. Going with quad-core isn't about getting faster it's about getting better performance for the energy used so being able to complete a process and then ramping down power usage is a good thing. I expect quad-core but I don't expect Apple going past 1.2GHz and wouldn't be surprised if they stayed at 1GHz.
As for the RAM that will have to be 1GB to support 4x as many pixels as the current iPad. Remember the GPU is integrated so it uses the system RAM.
A couple things... Quad-core Cortex-A9 are the standard now for this implementation just as dual-core Cortex-A15 will be at the end of the year. Going with quad-core isn't about getting faster it's about getting better performance for the energy used so being able to complete a process and then ramping down power usage is a good thing. I expect quad-core but I don't expect Apple going past 1.2GHz and wouldn't be surprised if they stayed at 1GHz.
As for the RAM that will have to be 1GB to support 4x as many pixels as the current iPad. Remember the GPU is integrated so it uses the system RAM.
good reply. I think it's easy to assume that processor design choices are made for marketing reasons but often the trends are more based on the packaging of the product. Apple could clock the dual cores higher but the absence of two physical cores means that the die size would be small (at 28nm) and might create hot spots.
Whatever happens whether Apple goes to Quad or stays Dual depends on how they best plan to manage the max TDP of the SoC. My gut says Quad because die size really isn't an issue (the A5 is pretty large) and Quad cores means you get to lower the frequency of each core safely.
1GB of RAM seems ideal because of the higher display resolution and perhaps there will be more threads running in the background (multitasking)
The only reason anyone expected a quad-core is because of marketing. Android Tablet X has quad-core so the iPad needs it! Ridiculous. If Apple sticks to it's typical design philosophy, it will balance performance with battery life. Consider the power requirements the iPad will have with double the pixels, a faster graphics core, and 4G LTE. Why add two more cores and reduce battery life even more just to check off a box on a marketing spec. sheet?
I agree. I think the overhead of quad CPU compared to what they need to invest in making the GPU real good means dual A9 CPU... Possibly clocked the same but with custom tweaks.
However, 1GB of RAM, that, I have to say, is quite likely, given the GPU RAM requirements.
Comments
The only reason anyone expected a quad-core is because of marketing. Android Tablet X has quad-core so the iPad needs it! Ridiculous. If Apple sticks to it's typical design philosophy, it will balance performance with battery life. Consider the power requirements the iPad will have with double the pixels, a faster graphics core, and 4G LTE. Why add two more cores and reduce battery life even more just to check off a box on a marketing spec. sheet?
It's the same thing we see with Apple continuing to use 512MB of RAM even though most Android phones and tablets have 1 GB. The focus on the numbers is a throw-back to a specs based design philosophy Apple abandoned long ago much to its benefit. It's all about the total package and user experience. It's a lesson that no Android tablet or phone maker has learned except for maybe Amazon.
A couple things... Quad-core Cortex-A9 are the standard now for this implementation just as dual-core Cortex-A15 will be at the end of the year. Going with quad-core isn't about getting faster it's about getting better performance for the energy used so being able to complete a process and then ramping down power usage is a good thing. I expect quad-core but I don't expect Apple going past 1.2GHz and wouldn't be surprised if they stayed at 1GHz.
As for the RAM that will have to be 1GB to support 4x as many pixels as the current iPad. Remember the GPU is integrated so it uses the system RAM.
A couple things... Quad-core Cortex-A9 are the standard now for this implementation just as dual-core Cortex-A15 will be at the end of the year. Going with quad-core isn't about getting faster it's about getting better performance for the energy used so being able to complete a process and then ramping down power usage is a good thing. I expect quad-core but I don't expect Apple going past 1.2GHz and wouldn't be surprised if they stayed at 1GHz.
As for the RAM that will have to be 1GB to support 4x as many pixels as the current iPad. Remember the GPU is integrated so it uses the system RAM.
good reply. I think it's easy to assume that processor design choices are made for marketing reasons but often the trends are more based on the packaging of the product. Apple could clock the dual cores higher but the absence of two physical cores means that the die size would be small (at 28nm) and might create hot spots.
Whatever happens whether Apple goes to Quad or stays Dual depends on how they best plan to manage the max TDP of the SoC. My gut says Quad because die size really isn't an issue (the A5 is pretty large) and Quad cores means you get to lower the frequency of each core safely.
1GB of RAM seems ideal because of the higher display resolution and perhaps there will be more threads running in the background (multitasking)
The only reason anyone expected a quad-core is because of marketing. Android Tablet X has quad-core so the iPad needs it! Ridiculous. If Apple sticks to it's typical design philosophy, it will balance performance with battery life. Consider the power requirements the iPad will have with double the pixels, a faster graphics core, and 4G LTE. Why add two more cores and reduce battery life even more just to check off a box on a marketing spec. sheet?
I agree. I think the overhead of quad CPU compared to what they need to invest in making the GPU real good means dual A9 CPU... Possibly clocked the same but with custom tweaks.
However, 1GB of RAM, that, I have to say, is quite likely, given the GPU RAM requirements.