The Apple A4 is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) planned by Apple, contrived by Samsung and firstly, used in the iPad tablet computer. As the name obliqued, the focal point was based on scheming a high-performance multicore PowerPC chip or fragment that was perfect for mobile devices.

It is based on the ARM processor architecture. The first description on the loose runs at 1 GHz that can achieve the maximum 10-hour battery life and according to some confidential sources, it may contain a Cortex-A8 CPU core paired with a PowerVR SGX graphics processor (GPU). It was announced on January 27, 2010; during Apple’s “Latest Creation” even , The Apple A4 also contains 512MB of DDR-S DRAM.
Steve Jobs said on stage at the iPad event,

“We have a chip called A4, which is our most advanced chip, we’ve ever done that powers the iPad. It’s got the processor, the graphics, the I/O, the memory controller — everything in this one chip, and it screams.”

Apple has also acquired a specialized power PC Processor from PA SEMI, a fables chip design and Jobs told The New York Times,

“PA Semi is going to do SoCs for iPhones and iPods.”

On the other hand, McLean gossips,

” All that was publicly known about the A4 was built upon reports like those published on AppleInsider’s, which highlighted a network of evidence documenting the company’s efforts to design its own custom processors based on the ARM architecture and incorporating graphics and video cores from Imagination.”

MacLean also reported the same remarks as the Jobs about the fables chip design PA SEMI.
With the use A4, Apple yet maintains its venerable relationship with ARM while giving on presentation, a design that no challenger can use in its own products. Also the A4 puts a key part of Apple’s iPad under its very own organization. And that shift is extraordinary.

[via AppleInside]