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Friday, March 01, 2013, 08:20 pm
ARM chip found in Apple's Lightning Digital AV Adapter could be AirPlay decoder
A recent teardown of Apple's Digital AV Adapter for Lightning connectors reveals that the unit comes with an embedded ARM system on a chip, complete with 256MB of RAM, which some speculate acts as an AirPlay decoder.
The discovery was made by developers at Panic Software, who stumbled upon the ARM chip in troubleshooting the device for video-out capabilities in an upcoming project.
As Apple describes it, the Lightning AV Adapter "mirrors exactly what you see on your device so that everyone in the room can enjoy it on your widescreen TV, video projection screen, or other HDMI-compatible display." It also supports 1080p output from an iPhone 5, fifth-gen iPod touch, fourth-gen iPad or iPad mini. As seen above, the unit sport a Lightning connector and an HDMI output.
Source: Panic Software
It is unclear why the accessory would require such advanced hardware, but Panic believes the adapter is outputting video by using Apple's AirPlay protocol. The firm was led to the conclusion after noting image artifacts and limited resolution suspiciously akin to those found when an iOS device streams to an Apple TV.
All we can figure is that the small number of Lightning pins prevented them from doing raw HDMI period, and the elegance of the adapter trumped the need for traditional video out, so someone had to think seriously out of the box. Or maybe they want get as much functionality out of the iPad as possible to reduce cost and complexity.
Initial testing of the adapter also found that Lightning may not be able to support full 1080p resolution over HDMI, lending credence to the theory that the device is actually converting the output signal into an upscaled AirPlay stream.
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Previous Comments View All
Initial testing of the adapter also found that Lightning may not be able to support full 1080p resolution over HDMI, lending credence to the theory that the device is actually converting the output signal into an upscaled AirPlay stream.
Well there is a bit of a difference when Lightning has 9 pins and HDMI has 19.
Upscaling bad.
As much RAM as the Model A Raspberry Pi. I wonder if people will load Linux on it just to do it.
Nope. It's for running iOS.
Why would they load iOS on an adapter?
Why would they load iOS on an adapter?
Crap, ¡. 
Hm, while I certainly do not know, I consider most of the explanations too complicated. An easier approach would be to multiplex the source signal to reduce the amount of pins required, and then inverse multiplex it in the adapter. The chip and RAM could simply handle inverse multiplexing and buffering. Upscaling is not the only possible cause of artifacts, it could simply be syncing issues in the demuxing.
Now talk about scaling down in technology.
They accidentally got a connector intended for the Iranian market, its the Echelon interface.
So are we saying that this thing is over-engineered because Apple needed to make a new connector in order to save space in it's iPhone and iPad?
So are we saying that this thing is over-engineered because Apple needed to make a new connector in order to save space in it's iPhone and iPad?
I don't think so.
Nope. It's for running iOS.
This adapter has as much RAM as the first iPhone. I don't see why not.
Why would they load iOS on an adapter?
They may not be running iOS, but they are some kind of OS. Perhaps the iPod Nano OS?
So are we saying that this thing is over-engineered because Apple needed to make a new connector in order to save space in it's iPhone and iPad?
I don't think so.
I don't think it's a completely unreasonable premise, particularly on the emaciated iPhone5 and iPodT.
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...the unit comes with an embedded ARM system on a chip, complete with 256MB of RAM, which some speculate acts as an AirPlay decoder.
Nope. It's for running iOS.
This adapter has as much RAM as the first iPhone. I don't see why not.
"Obviously for the sole purpose of making the accessory overpriced!"