Apple A5 processor is designed by Apple and manufactured by Samsung. Apple A5 uses package-on-package technology, which is an integrated circuit packaging technique that combines discrete logic and memory ball grid array packages. These packages are arranged one above the other and a standard interface routes the signals in between them. The main benefit of package-on-package technology is, motherboard space savings and also the RAM device is not coupled with the logic device. The A5 processor contains ARM Cortex A9 CPU with NEON SMD accelerator and dual core POWER VR SGX543MP2 GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), which can move 35 million polygons per second at 200 MHz. The processor powers DDR2 (double data rate) and 512 MB RAM (memory capacity)
. Neon technology is a 64+128 bit SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data), which is an instruction set that is used in the ARM architecture of A5. This instruction set provides high standard acceleration for signal processing applications. A5 is a system-on-a-chip based technology and it is a single integrated circuit chip that contains all types of signals on a single chip substrate.
Technical Specs of A5 Processor
Core
Two powerful cores in a single A5 chip can do twice the work and give a high performance during application loading and switching. The ARM Cortex A-9 is a multicore processor that uses ARM V7 Instruction set. ARM processors are considered to be best for devices that require low power consumption and is said to provide 10 hours of battery life. Various micro controllers, micro processors and other embedded systems use the 32-bit ARM processors. Apple is one of the various licensees that uses this processor. Some of the other important features of ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore are:
- Thumb 2 is a programming technology that has 32-bit instruction set coding to give a good performance.
- TrustZone is a technology that provides security code access to the device using it.
- Jazelle DBX helps in the execution of Java bytecode, which is used in the Java compilation.
Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) is a circuit that buffers the images in a frame and sets it into motion so that the video or images can be viewed in the home screen or display. A GPU, which is also called visual processing unit is used in embedded systems, cell phones, desktops, etc. It controls the computer graphics (CG) and alters the memory to give an efficient output to the display. It has the capacity to move 1 billion pixels per second. The dual processor boasts 9X faster graphics processing and its high standard graphical processing will render better performance during video viewing and playing video games.
Other Technical Specs of A5 Processor
| Technical Specifications | |
| Die Size | 12.1 mm × 10.1 mm |
| Die Mark | APLO498E01 |
| Package Size | 16.7 mm × 14.3 mm |
| Processor Core | ARM Cortex A9 |
| Clock Speed | 1 GHz |
| DRAM | LP DDR2 |
| L1 CPU Cache | 32 kB instruction set and 32 kB data |
| L2 CPU cache | 1 MB |
Benchmarks
After analyzing the JavaScript performance of the dual core processor, CNET UK revealed that A5 processor has nothing extraordinary in its web browsing performance and they also said that iPad2 does not use any A-9 based cores, but instead they use custom designed A8 cores itself. The A5 processor clock works at the speed of 1 GHz, but some benchmarks say that it is not exactly 1 GHz and the clock speed range varies from 890 MHz to 1 GHz. The processor dynamically adjusts its frequency to save its battery life and thereby, provides efficient power consumption than its predecessor A4.
Motorola Xoom and iPad are good competitors and both work with A5 processor. The cost of the A5 processor is approximated to be 75% more than A4 and the CPU performance is also expected to increase twice than that of A4. "The first dual-core tablet to ship in volume", these were the words shared by Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple company), regarding A5 processor. He also states that "The original iPad is no slouch", and hence, we can expect a much higher speed in the new iPad2 that has the A5 processor in it.
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