CNET’s iPad Atlas blog reports on the thoughts of Linley Gwennap senior editor at Microprocessor Report, who says that he believes that Apple’s next chip, the A6, will be quad-core, and simply too hot for anything other than the iPad to handle. Gwennap came to this conclusion after having spent some time closely studying Apple’s current A5 processor, which is installed in the iPad 2, in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of how Apple uses its processor technology to make its hardware faster and more efficient than that of its rivals.
During his research, Gwennap surmised that Apple has bypassed vendors such as Nvidia and made its own chips because it can get bigger and better chips for the same price as those made by Nvidia and similar companies. The fact that Apple sells so many devices that use its own in-house chips means that research and development costs are kept to under $1 per device.
When considering the future A6 processor, Gwennap says that it will be quad-core, and that the iPhone 5 won't be able to handle it, so it will only be used in the iPad. The iPhone 5 will continue to run on a modified A5 chip until Apple can find out how to make the A6 run cooler.
Finally, Gwennap says that even he can’t work out what some of the A5 is used for, as approximately 33 square millimetres of the chip is extra circuitry, and no one knows what it does.
Source: Rumor: Apple to make A6 quad-core, iPad-only | iPad Atlas - CNET Reviews
