Apple birth a performance breakthrough Wednesday with its young A5X central processor for the iPad , but it ’s possible that this scrap wo n’t make its way into the next iPhone , analysts say .
The chips used in the first two iPads , the A4 and A5 , both made their elbow room into a new iPhone presently after . But the A5X , with its fleshy focal point on graphic , may not be ideal for smartphone use , and Apple may wait for a more exponent - effective microprocessor chip establish with a new manufacture process .
The A5X has two CPU cores , just like the A5 , and it was the ranking graphics operation of the A5X that Apple play up atits launch event for the new iPadin San Francisco . The new crisp has four graphics cores , which should boost multimedia system performance and allow for quiet performance of the iPad ’s higher - resoluteness , 2048 - by-1536 - pixel display .
Apple may have role - build the A5X specifically for the new iPad ’s improved sieve , say Linley Gwennap , founder and principal analyst of The Linley Group , who accentuate he was still sorting through the information about the fresh chip Wednesday .
“ I imagine that this new chip is probably just for the iPad , ” Gwennap said . “ It looks like they planned ahead for this . ”
If Apple secrete a new iPhone later this year , which seems likely , it may opt to boost battery aliveness rather than graphics , Gwennap said . In that pillow slip , it may wait for a splintering cook up on a 28 - nanometer fabrication mental process , which should make the chip more might - efficient and cheaper to get , he say .
Apple may have been in a hurry to release the iPad and moved forwards with the A5X because it did n’t want to wait for a 28 - micromillimeter part , Gwennap said . The number refer to the size of the smallest circuits etched onto the cow dung .
However , the A5X could be suited for other devices with slightly larger screens than the iPhone , Gwennap said . It could be used in a smaller version of the iPad , for example . It could also be worthy for a video cyclosis gimmick like Apple TV . Apple announced a new reading of the Apple telly on Wednesday , but it has a single - core A5 potato chip .
Dean McCarron , principal analyst at Mercury Research , also sees the current A5X as an unlikely candidate for the next iPhone , which wo n’t require as much graphic processing office as an iPad . The current iPhone has a video display density of 326 pixels per inch , greater than the late iPad ’s 264 pixels per inch , but the iPhone has only a 3.7 - inch display .
“ There ’s no technical understanding to make the iPhone display better , ” McCarron said .
Like Apple ’s A4 and A5 chips , A5X is based on an ARM processor core , the same type establish in most other smartphones . Many current ARM - based splintering are manufactured with a 40 - millimicron process , but a faulting to 28 nm is expected later on this year . The belated chips are based on ARM ’s Cortex - A9 design ; the first chips base on a faster and more ability - efficient Cortex - A15 core are also due by and by this twelvemonth .
Apple could take one of several approaches with the next iPhone , McCarron said , including using either the A5 or A5X design and having the chip made on the more power - effective 28 - nm process .
“ For phones in particular … there ’s a set of incentive to employ the modish cognitive process , ” he said .
Ahead of Wednesday ’s annunciation , there was speculation that Apple might use a quad - core mainframe in its new lozenge . But the determination to stick with a dual - core chip was a sound one , psychoanalyst aver . There are head about whether current package is ready to take advantage of four core , and chip makers let in Texas Instruments have stuck with dual - core sleeve mainframe for now for that reason .
Most of the subsist software for Apple machine was n’t designed for a four - effect CPU , so going with a double - core chip made common sense , McCarron said . By comparison , graphics public presentation scales fairly well across more cores and is quite well - abstracted by operating organisation .
Updated at 7:40 a.m. PT to include video recording of the iPad launching .
