Apple’s subtle mention that the iPad features a CPU of their own making, the A4, was actually the most exciting part of the whole announcement. It’s pretty important.
Of course it makes sense why Apple’s not making a big deal about it if you understand what Apple’s real goal is. This chip is so important to Apple because it gives them greater control of the user experience … from the inside out, while allowing them to reach their goals — and more importantly — control their own destiny, by decreasing their dependency on outside, external companies. If you’ve played poker, you know this is something you might not want to make too big a deal of.
Gruber sums up the importance of the new CPU in his iPad article:
Apple now owns and controls their own mobile CPUs. There aren’t many companies in the world that can say that. And from what I saw today, Apple doesn’t just own and control a mobile CPU, they own and control the hands-down best mobile CPU in the world […] They’re not getting into the CPU business for kicks, they’re getting into it to kick ass.
This is important, and even if they’re not making a big thing out of it, is a very big deal for Apple. And as much as you’d expect them to brag about it, they’re not. For example, the A4 is mentioned on the iPad’s design page, halfway down, “The A4 chip inside iPad was custom-designed by Apple engineers to be extremely powerful yet extremely power efficient.” It’s mentioned again on the tech specs page it is described as a “high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip”.
They’re not bragging about the A4 for the same reason that Disney doesn’t talk about how their attractions’ animatronic actors work: it detracts from the experience and clouds the message which is, in a nutshell, “let us worry about the experience, just enjoy it.”
The more Apple can control the technology, the more they can control the experience. And when it comes to consumer products, this controlled experience is why Apple is king.
Update: Siracusa and a few others predicted an Apple CPU would power the iPad, but I think its real-life performance is surprising everybody.
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Matthew Savage
28 January 2010 at 7:06 am
To be honest Apple has some big cajones to go and create their own Silicon for something like this - but it looks like it paid off big time.
I will be interested to see if they make this tech available to other markets - embedded systems could get a huge boost (think in car systems, in flight entertainment, even medical assistive devices et al).
Still, I cant wait until the device comes out down here in Australia!
Harry
28 January 2010 at 7:06 am
This is huge.
Its safe to assume now then, that the next version of the iPhone will contain the new A4 chip.
Michael Camilleri
28 January 2010 at 7:35 am
I think it’s worth pointing out that this is great from Apple’s point of view because it makes it harder for its competitors to simply buy the components it’s using and then worry about the software. Given that they’re not good even at this, you’ve got to figure it’s put Apple a few streets ahead to have those same competitors have to develop the hardware as well.
Michael Johnson
28 January 2010 at 8:56 am
I completely agree with both you and Gruber about the importance–and implications–of this processor. It is huge.
However, I don’t necessarily agree with your assertion that they’re trying to keep it hush hush… If they had really wanted to not make a big deal of it, why mention it at all?
Travis Cripps
28 January 2010 at 11:41 am
One advantage that I think hasn’t been mentioned is the cost savings to Apple.
Assuming they have achieved a sufficient cost savings to match the cost provided by the economies of scale of the traditional chip suppliers, manufacturing their own chip means they don’t have to pay the cost of another company’s profit margin. This could lower the overall cost of the iPad, and help them achieve their low price point goals.
Justin Ridgewell
28 January 2010 at 11:46 am
They could be not bragging about it because they didn’t design it, according to Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/28/apples-a4-is-an-arm-based-system-on-a-chip-a-la-tegra-2/). Just have to wait until it ships to really see what they’ve done.
alastair
29 January 2010 at 6:53 am
If they’ve done an Apple branded SoC, it’s very likely to be based on off-the-shelf IP cores like the ones from ARM. However, it’s also very likely to be heavily customised; there’s no point in making your own unless you’re going to customise it for your application, and indeed that’s why people buy IP cores from companies like ARM rather than just buying a ready-made chip from somewhere.
In the video they did comment that they’d worked with the software team to design the A4, so my guess is that the CPU will have been customised to fit the software. That might mean (for instance) that it has some instructions of its own that help the software to run faster, that cache sizes have been tuned and so on; in extremis it would be possible to do things like hardware accelerated dispatch for ObjC method calls, though I don’t know whether they’ll have gone that far :-)
Further, IP cores are just specifications; they need to be turned into actual hardware, and *that* part of the process has significant implications for things like power usage. It’s a bit more than Engadget’s “arranging and integrating these components in the silicon”, and P.A. Semi was a specialist in exactly this kind of work.
Conclusion: I wouldn’t take Engadget’s article too seriously. Even if they’re right, they’re under-stating the level of involvement from Apple’s hardware team, I think.