Ipad contains quad core.

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.






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

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Last edited by synther; 01-29-2010 at 02:47 AM.

what.

quadcore any only one app at a time?lol overkill?

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!"

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.