AMD announced on Wednesday that it has hired Jim Keller, who was previously a director in Apple's mobile platform architecture group where he worked on Apple's custom chips for devices like the iPhone and iPad.
Apple's forthcoming fifth-generation iPhone will sport a new, faster custom processor dubbed the A8, as well as a baseband processor from Qualcomm, according to a new report.
Confirming a rumor from early April, The New York Times on Tuesday reported that Apple purchased Intrinsity, a privately owned ARM chip design firm.
Apple raised eyebrows during the original iPad unveiling when it casually noted that the new device would be using a new, Apple-designed System on a Chip named the A4. The company's future custom silicon plans are likely to expand even faster following its acquisition of Intrinsity, a privately owned ARM design firm.
Though early reports and speculation suggested Apple's custom A4 system-on-a-chip found inside the iPad was based on the more advanced, dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 architecture, one new report says the processor actually "just isn't anything to write home about."
In bypassing a traditional chip maker like Intel and creating its own custom ARM-based processor for the iPad, Apple has likely incurred an investment of about $1 billion, a new report suggests.
Details of Apple's custom-built processor inside the newly unveiled iPad are beginning to surface, with a report stating the system-on-a-chip includes an ARM Cortex-A9-based CPU accompanied by a GPU.
U.S. publishers are reportedly negotiating tablet-related content deals with Apple in New York; a list of potential component suppliers for the hardware has surfaced, including a P.A. Semi-designed processor; and new allegations claim Time Inc. has little knowledge of the tablet.
ARM is demonstrating the first working example of a multicore processor that may dramatically speed up smartphones. Meanwhile, Apple is looking for iPhone engineers that can write multithreaded code that may take advantage of ARM's breakthrough.
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AppleInsider Staff
Slash Lane
Sam Oliver
Daniel Eran Dilger
Katie Marsal
