Apple A4
The A4 processor
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| Produced | From April 3, 2010 to September 10, 2013 |
|---|---|
| Designed by | Apple Inc. |
| Common manufacturer(s) | |
| Max. CPU clock rate | (iPhone 4, iPod Touch 4G) 800 MHz to (iPad) 1 GHz |
| Min. feature size | 45 nm |
| Instruction set | ARMv7-A |
| Microarchitecture | ARM Cortex-A8 |
| Product code | S5L8930X |
| Cores | 1 |
| L1 cache | 32 KB instruction + 32 KB data |
| L2 cache | 512 KB |
| Predecessor | Samsung S5L8922 |
| Successor | Apple A5 |
| GPU | PowerVR SGX 535 |
| Application | Mobile |
The Apple A4 is a 32-bit package on package (PoP) system-on-a-chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc. and manufactured by Samsung. It combines an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU with a PowerVR GPU, and emphasizes power efficiency. The chip commercially debuted with the release of Apple's iPad tablet; followed shortly by the iPhone 4 smartphone, the iPod Touch (4th generation), and the Apple TV (2nd generation). It was superseded by the Apple A5 processor used in the iPad 2 released the following year, which was then subsequently replaced by the Apple A5X processor in the iPad (3rd generation).
Apple A4 is based on the ARM processor architecture. The first version released runs at 1 GHz for the iPad and contains an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU core paired with a PowerVR SGX 535 graphics processor (GPU) built on Samsung's 45 nm silicon chip fabrication process. The clock speed for the units used in the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch (4th generation) is 800 MHz, but the clock speed for the unit used in the Apple TV has not been released.
The Cortex-A8 core used in the A4 is thought to use performance enhancements developed by chip designer Intrinsity (which was subsequently acquired by Apple) in collaboration with Samsung. The resulting core, dubbed "Hummingbird", is able to run at far higher clock rates than other implementations while remaining fully compatible with the Cortex-A8 design provided by ARM. Other performance improvements include additional L2 cache. The same Cortex-A8 CPU core used in the A4 is also used in Samsung's S5PC110A01 SoC.
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