Analysis of the new Apple iPad
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 9, 2012 1:37 AM ESTThe CPU
TI was one of the earliest partners with ARM on the Cortex A15 and silicon just came back from the fab at the beginning of this year. Even if Apple were similarly instrumental in the definition of the Cortex A15 architecture, it would be Q3 at the earliest before it could have working silicon available in volume. With no A15 design ready and presumably no desire to jump into the custom-designed ARM CPU market quite yet, Apple once again turned to the Cortex A9 for the A5X.
Apple confirmed that there are only two Cortex A9 cores on the A5X and it neglected to mention operating frequency. I suspect the lack of talk about CPU clocks indicates that they perhaps haven't changed. We could still be looking at a 1GHz max operating frequency.
Although we've speculated that Apple moved to a 32nm design with the A5X, it is entirely possible that we're still dealing with mature 45nm silicon here. It would explain the relatively conservative GPU clocks, although the additional GPU cores would balloon die size to 150 - 160mm^2 (roughly twice the size of Tegra 3). If A5X is 32nm, assuming a relatively conservative 80% scaling factor Apple would be able to maintain a die size of around 125mm^2, similar to the previous generation A5.
A quad-core CPU design does make some sense on a tablet, but only one that is either running heavily threaded workloads or is subjected to pretty intense multitasking. As we found in our iPhone 4S review, many iOS apps are still not very well threaded and have a difficult time utilizing two cores, much less four. On the multitasking front, Apple has enabled task switching but there's still no way to run two applications side-by-side. The most CPU intensive workloads on iOS still require that the app is active in the foreground for user interaction. Apps can work in the background but it's not all that constant/common, and again, they aren't pegging multiple cores. Apple built a very efficient, low overhead platform with iOS - it had to thanks to the hardware specs of the original iPhone. A result of iOS' low-overhead, very efficient design is expectedly low CPU utilization for most tasks. This is not to say that CPU performance isn't important under iOS, just that it's hard to find apps that regularly require more than a single core and definitely hard to find those that can benefit from more than two cores.
I will say though, Apple could easily add more cores if it wanted to spend the die area without a significant impact on power consumption. Remember that idle cores can be fully power gated, effectively reducing their power consumption while idle to zero. Apple could also assume a fairly conservative CPU governor and only wake up the third and fourth cores when absolutely necessary (similar to what we see happening with Tegra 3 on Android).
What about the Next iPhone?
Apple has traditionally used the iPad SoC in the subsequent iPhone release that followed later in the same year. It would make sense to assume that we'll see a smartphone version of the A5X SoC (at lower clocks) later this year. The A6? That'll probably debut next year with the 4th generation iPad.
Memory Capacity
Apple wouldn't let us run any third party applications on the new iPad so we couldn't confirm the actual memory capacity of the new model. On stage at the event, Epic mentioned that the new iPad has more memory and a higher output resolution than the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3. The Xbox 360 has 512MB of memory, and Apple's A5/A5X has a dual-channel LPDDR2 memory controller. Each channel needs to be populated evenly in order to maintain peak bandwidth, which greatly narrows the options for memory capacity on the new iPad. 768MB would imply 512MB on one channel and 256MB on the other, delivering peak performance for apps and data in the first 512MB but lower performance for the upper 256MB. Given the low cost of DRAM these days, I think it's safe to assume that Apple simply went with two 512MB DRAM devices in a PoP configuration on the A5X for a total of 1GB of LPDDR2 memory in the new iPad.
4G LTE Support
Brian did an excellent analysis on the LTE baseband in the new iPad here. Qualcomm's MDM9600, a 40nm design appears to be used by Apple instead of the 28nm MDM9615. In hindsight, speculating the use of a 28nm LTE baseband for the new iPad was likely short sighted. Apple had to be in the mass production phase for the new iPad somewhere in the January/February timeframe. Although 28nm silicon is shipping to customers today, that was likely too aggressive of a schedule to make it work for an early-March launch.
| Apple iPad Pricing | |||||
| 16GB | 32GB | 64GB | |||
| WiFi | $499 | $599 | $699 | ||
| WiFi + 4G | $629 | $729 | $829 | ||
Apple offers carrier specific iPad 4G models on AT&T and Verizon, although both versions can roam on 3G networks around the world. Apparently the iPad 4G isn't SIM locked, so you'll be able to toss in a SIM from other carriers with compatible networks. LTE data plans are available from AT&T and Verizon with no long-term contract:
| iPad LTE Plan Pricing (Monthly) | ||||||
| $14.99 | $20 | $30 | $50 | |||
| AT&T | 250MB | - | 3GB | 5GB | ||
| Verizon | - | 1GB | 2GB | 5GB | ||
The Name
Apple surprised many by referring to the 3rd generation iPad simply as "the new iPad". The naming seems awkward today, but it's clearly a step towards what Apple does across many of its product lines. The MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iPod all receive the same simple branding treatment; newer models are differentiated by a quietly spoken year or generation marker.
I still remember back several years ago when PC OEMs were intrigued by the idea of selling desktops based on model year and not on specs. Apple has effectively attained the holy grail here.
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name99 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Buy yourself a copy of GoodReader NOW!Most of what I read on my iPad is technical PDFs, and GoodReader does a good job of allowing you to define crop margins so that the relevant text covers the entire page. For PDFs targeting A4 or US Letter it works really well.
I assume you are currently reading PDFs in iBooks? That's garbage --- iBooks is pure crap when it comes to handling PDFs. Not to mention, GoodReader also does a much better job of allowing you to file a large number of PDFs in a hierarchical system.
Michiel - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Why do you think serious readers exclude serous gamers, mailers, twitters, facebookers, bloggers, movie-fans, TV watchers, musicians, photographers, students, etc, etc...Oh, by the way; The Kindle excludes all of them.
If you want to mock the iPad, think first !
Michiel - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Are so clever or am i a retard ?Why in the name of whatever is it so damn hard to figure out what the purpose is of an iPad ?
I'll go to the store on my bike.
Wait ! A motorbike is better.
Wait ! A car is better.
Wait ! A Ferrari is better.
Wait ! Give me an airplane.
Wait ! Give me a 747.
Is it so hard to see things in perspective ?
Lucian Armasu - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
If the CPU hasn't changed and the GPU doesn't even compensate for the increase in resolution, can you really say that iPad 3 is faster than iPad 2, then? Somehow I think it isn't, and even if it was, as you said, some apps and games that worked on iPad 2, will not work on iPad 3 with the new resolution (only if they keep the old one).As for Windows 8 tablets, to do that you'd need the x86 version of Windows 8. As far as I know Atom doesn't support such high resolutions, so it will not be competitive with high-end ARM chips - unless you're really thinking of using Ivy Bridge Core i3-i7 chips in your $1000+ tablet. Not to mention that the graphics performance will be terrible even then, and you'd need an even bigger battery than the one in iPad 3, just to have half the battery life.
So far I still still Android as the only one that can seamlessly work between a tablet and a laptop form factor, although it does need a few more improvements to allow for a more "desktop-like" feel when in laptop mode (even though Windows 8 is wrongly going in the opposite direction).
vision33r - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
This is why Apple sold over 100mil iPads because it's target towards people who don't want to be stuck behind a PC or a notebook.Avg folks just need a web pad for viewing sports scores, lottery numbers, news, read a few books, and play a nifty game.
They don't need a quad core i7 CPU overclocked and 1TB of disk space.
iPad sells because the buyer does not want to understand specs.
Specs is the reason Android tablets won't succeed. It is killing the Android tablet market as more vendors will bail as profits are so razor thin and depreciation is fast and high.
When you Android folks only look at paper specs, 90% of Android tabs are already out dated in 3-4 months as you guys would only buy the highest paper specs.
Zero incentive for a vendor to push out a high quality tablet if the margins are so thin.
Icehawk - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I totally agree as both a tech guy and an iPad owner - I use my PC for most "computing" tasks but I use the iPad for reading, looking something up quickly in front of my TV, and casual gaming - and for that specs don't matter just how it works. I passed on the iPad2 waiting for the resolution bump the iPad has desperately needed along with increased memory - IME RAM and poor coding are why the majority of apps that crash do so.I'm curious whether app size will increase significantly due to higher rez resources?
gorash - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Android tablets don't sell because Honeycomb is a temporary OS. With Honeycomb and Jelly Bean they should do well.WaltFrench - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
When I look at the apps that *I* see people using on the iPad (in coffee shops, airplanes, bart, friends' homes…), essentially NONE are maxing the GPU, and CPUs are maxed only on occasion.That's cuz I don't bump into gamers. But the sales figures say iPad users are buying lots of games, so that's the only likely reason for the GPU upgrade: to support hi-res gaming, which was already no slouch on the iPad versus other tablets. Game devs can chip in, but with relatively little fragmentation of the iPad line (accentuated by the fair assumption that the really hardcore types will immediately upgrade to the iPad3), developers have a pretty easy target to optimize for. Should result in extremely playable, very good-looking games.
Operations such as surfing, which spend relatively little time rendering text or elementary graphics, won't be bottlenecked by speed, either.
The new GPU power seems to be exploited very nicely in the iMovie and iPhoto apps. Here, the transformations are applied to the whole photo image, while only a relatively low-res screen view needs updating. Since the number of pixels on the screen is not the limiting factor, the net transformation should be quite a bit faster (assuming it's actually done in real time, as opposed to a series of filter codes stored with the base image).
Already, iMovie was a killer app on the iPad2; the only Android app I saw was hopelessly buggy and with the level of Android tablet sales that have happened in 2 years, there's exactly zero developer incentive to tweak for all the CPU/GPU variations. Again, Apple is extending its lead in quality of user experience.
doobydoo - Monday, March 12, 2012 - link
'If the CPU hasn't changed and the GPU doesn't even compensate for the increase in resolution, can you really say that iPad 3 is faster than iPad 2, then?'Arguably, yes. Is 100 fps at 10 x 10 better than 60 fps at 2000 x 1000? No.
You have to take resolution into account when assessing speed. Also, bear in mind that the iPad 2 was not 'too slow' - it ran games at a perfect 60 FPS since games were designed to run on it. The iPad 3 therefore doesn't have to be 'faster' in raw FPS terms, its aim, clearly, was to increase the gaming quality without sacrificing performance.
I also disagree that the GPU necessarily doesn't compensate for the increase in resolution. Despite what Anand says in this article, FPS does not reduce proportionally with resolution, so it may well be that the MP4 compensates for the increase in resolution perfectly well.
'some apps and games that worked on iPad 2, will not work on iPad 3 with the new resolution'
I suspect this is simply wrong. Either the iPad 3 will have been tested with some mainstream old apps to test, or it may retain the ability to process games at the old resolution and upscale. Giving the best of both worlds to developers, better quality, or better performance. Or both.
'So far I still still Android as the only one that can seamlessly work between a tablet and a laptop form factor'
The problem is that the Android tablets are nowhere near as polished or as high performance, with lower resolution screens and slower hardware. Using onlive for the iPad you can get a complete desktop experience - not that that's what most people who buy tablets are looking for.
JK6959 - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
The upgrade in GPU was to push the 4x increase in pixels at a useable speed, but the cost of more GPU and Resolution seems to be a large fall in effective battery life per WHr. Given they can't chunk up the phone for a fat battery and the doubling of GPU power would be wasted I cant see the benefit of putting this into the phone.If they increases screen to 3.7-4.0 inches and use the old iPad resolution to maintain retina DPI and some overlap of ipad/iphone resolution, the old A5 would still have more power than needed. For example a Full HD gaming laptop may get a GTX 560 in it, but you're not going to put that in a 1024x600 netbook as it is simply too much
Apple have shown they're willing to delay until a product is ready, I think they'll get something more efficient in the next iPhone and that being more than just a die shrink or increasing GPU cores. I hope for A15 28nm, like TI have shown only 800mhz is needed for a fast performance