Ipad contains quad core.

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by synther, Jan 28, 2010.

  1. synther

    synther Well-Known Member

    #1 synther, Jan 28, 2010
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2010
    The ipad, will contain a quad core processor, 4 cores wich will run at 1Ghz total It's capable of 1.3Ghz, but the processor would get too hot if they on 1.3Ghz.

    e: it's a system-on-chip CPU and gpu. The developing of this new chip is posibble because Apple has bought the small processor fabricator PA Semi.

    [​IMG]




    If you have some more info, or if anything I posted is wrong please tell me!
     
  2. yourofl10

    yourofl10 Well-Known Member

    Dec 11, 2008
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  3. tukun

    tukun Well-Known Member

    Oct 7, 2009
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    quadcore any only one app at a time?lol overkill?
     
  4. Yeah...that'd be great, but it's not true!

    It's a single core processor plus an integrated GPU.

    Plus, Steve Jobs would never let an opportunity pass to mention that the iPad has a quad core CPU! That would be half of the presentation.

    Steve: "The iPad is powered by the new QUAD CORE Apple A4 chip! Our own custom silicon! Did I mention that it has a QUAD CORE PROCESSOR! Yeah...well does...that's 4 cores people!"
     
  5. MidianGTX

    MidianGTX Well-Known Member

    Jun 16, 2009
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    Yeah, it's 1Gz total. Quad core would probably change my mind on how effective gaming on the iPad could be... it might even get me interested.
     
  6. GlennX

    GlennX Well-Known Member

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    Well, the graphics are on the A4 chip too and presumably run concurrently if it's going to be anywhere near as fast as the PowerVR chips in iPhones and iPods. Maybe there are 3 'cores' dedicated to graphics, or 2 to graphics and one to sound mixing or something. This would make it arguably quad core. Who knows though?, the info just isn't out there yet.
     
  7. Eli

    Eli ᕕ┌◕ᗜ◕┐ᕗ
    Staff Member Patreon Silver Patreon Gold

    If it's a custom chip I'm curious how anyone knows for sure what it contains or how many cores it has. No one has used one outside of the controlled environment following the keynote yesterday. Right now it's just as realistic to think it's a multi-core chip as it is a single core.
     
  8. mrWalrus

    mrWalrus Well-Known Member

    Dec 20, 2008
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    Now you're doing Atari Jaguar math.

    Anyone who's touched it has mentioned how it hasn't lagged doing any task, and from the videos I've seen it looks plenty fast for all that it needs to do. So from here, a designer's perspective, it looks to provide all the horse power needed to make enjoyable experiences.

    At this point there's really no way to know if it's a true quad core under the hood, but we should know once Ars Technica or Boy Genius Report does a tear down. However Apple is using a custom chip, no? So there's a chance we may never know..

    Common sense would suggest, however, there's no way this thing has a quad-core. Why? The simplest reason is so they can leave room for improvement. ;)
     
  9. mobile1up

    mobile1up Well-Known Member

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    beign 1Ghz with 4 cores would make it 250Mhz each; under half the current performance of the existing CPU in the iPhone.. with more screen to update (1024x768 vs 480x320); coupled with the fact the applications are compiled for a single cpu core (single process) - applications would run dog slow.
     
  10. thewiirocks

    thewiirocks Well-Known Member

    Aug 28, 2009
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    Clock speeds are never computed that way. If Apple said 1GHz, then it's running at 1GHz. Given the current state of processor fabrication, I don't see any reason why it would run any slower than that. (Especially since that would be slower than the iPhone!)

    My suspicion is that the CPU is multicore, but not like anyone here is thinking. You're all thinking of Symmetric Multiprocessing. (SMP) This chip is most likely Asymmetric, having cores for cpu, graphics, and compression/decompression for video/sound.
     
  11. MikeSz_spokko

    MikeSz_spokko Well-Known Member

    May 27, 2009
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    Ok, so let's say it is indeed a quad-core (Cortex-A9 MPCore), so what ?

    After all, what's the point of having multiple cores ? Where do they benefit the most ? Dare I say a word from outside of the Apple dictionary ? The "oh-so-dreadful" multitasking ?

    In theory you can of course use multiple cores within game - have one process AI, one graphics etc. But with iPhone/iPod going single-core route, how much of an expense would it be to develop a custom multi-core version just for the iPad ?

    And what about other applications ? Those that don't need all that much computing power (most iPod/iPhone games run perfectly well using less than half the computing power of EACH of the A9 cores) ?

    Quad-core in something limited to a single app at any given time is about as useful as 4x4 by AMD or V-8 from Intel. Meaning completely impractical and bad for power consumption
     
  12. mobile1up

    mobile1up Well-Known Member

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    the A4 sounds like it is based on the Cortex R4 - a system-on-chip by ARM.
     
  13. I don't know the real specs either, but considering that Apple hasn't even put quad core chips into any of its laptops yet, I think it would be wildly unrealistic to think that they would put a quad core CPU (meaning SMP) into this device and sell it for $499, and then not even bother to mention it in the 90 minute iPad extravaganza we saw yesterday.

    Might it have cores for CPU, GPU, FPU and something else? Maybe, but that is not what one would normally call a "quad core" processor.
     
  14. swishinj

    swishinj Well-Known Member

    Aug 3, 2009
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    #317
    true true
     
  15. GlennX

    GlennX Well-Known Member

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    I still think there is a chance that it has other cores that might be dedicated to doing the work of a GPU.

    I'm kind of out of the loop with current high end graphics hardware thinking but it seems to me (as someone who coded software 3D engines back in the day) that with the move to pixel and vertex shaders it would be entirely possible to make an efficient CPU core do the work of a modern GPU. In fact, I think this is the way it's going (or may have already gone, as I say, i'm out of the loop) with companies like NVidia.

    One core could run a vertex shader engine in software could use the kind of vector extensions that already exist on the ARM processors in even the first iDevices.

    If there was another core (or 2) handling the pixel output with the help of custom instructions to do things like filtered texture fetches from compressed texture formats, you would have all 4 cores occupied with no need for multitasking and, presumably, a system that would be pretty easy to get the iPhone OS running on.

    Those extra cores could also handle sound and video decoding very efficiently.

    All guesswork inspired more by the lack of info on the graphics chip than any actual facts :)
     
  16. jclardy

    jclardy Well-Known Member

    Dec 10, 2008
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    I'm just hoping that they have a decent graphics component on the chip. The 3GS has a nice GPU that enables it to do some good 3D gaming, but part of that is because the iPhone has such a small screen. The iPad will have to push around 5x as many pixels so if the graphics chip has not been improved over the 3GS it could be worse at 3D gaming, although better for everything else.
     
  17. synther

    synther Well-Known Member

    Ok so the processor seems to be not so good. Not good enough for impressive games. IPhone 3Gs runs at 600 MHz, single core. I guess the next ipad will have a more impressive processor, as far as I know this one is crap.
     
  18. Not sure what makes you say that. It is likely more powerful than the chip in the 3GS in terms of both raw CPU power and GPU speed.

    EA demonstrated Need For Speed Shift on it, a 3D racing game, and from what I've read, it ran very smoothly.
     
  19. ImNoSuperMan

    ImNoSuperMan Well-Known Member

    Jun 28, 2009
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    The one thing I loved about Macs when I first got mine 5 years ago was how efficient it was in Multi Tasking compared to it`s windows counterpart. So nope, it`s not outside Apple`s dictionary. They actually know how to deal with it a lot better than their competition. Apple just tends to take its time and implement features in their devices only when they are 100% satisfied with it.

    Remember copy/paste? Everyone wanted it in the iPhone and jailbreak community had a workaround for it too. But when the official one came out, it was a hell lot better than the jailbreak c/p.

    Also you seriously dont think believe OS 4.0 wont have multitasking, do you? So within a few months of iPad`s launch we`ll have it multi tasking for sure. Jailbreaking already allows you to multi-task very efficiently especially if you have the newer iDevices. Dont see any reason Apple wont enable it in the next OS.
     
  20. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5 Well-Known Member

    What a bizarre thing to say...everybody who's seen it says it runs fast. All the evidence so far says it's an excellent CPU. Also, I thought everybody learned years ago that MHz numbers aren't particularly meaningful except when comparing processors of the exact same type.

    --Eric
     

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