Thread: Apple iPad
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Milhouse is offline Milhouse
2010-01-28 , 02:56
Posts: 3,401 | Thanked: 1,255 times | Joined on Nov 2005 @ London, UK
#208
Originally Posted by Nexus7 View Post
Various links on the web. Apple hasn't released any definitive information. I heard that all the apps for the iPhone will run on it, so I assume the chip architecture is the same; unless the apps are written in some high-level scripting language.

All of which supports the point I made, that FOSS development for this chip won't be possible.
I suspect everyone is speculating and assuming it's ARM since that would be the obvious choice, but ARM isn't where PA Semi had their area of expertise - and no doubt masses of IP - and a non-ARM core could, in theory, be made to run ARM instructions at an acceptable level of performance - Apple certainly have background here - particularly as most iPhone apps are not that intensive to start with.

And as the link provided by quipper8 points out, having a completely new architecture - ie. non-ARM - just makes the iPad that much harder to hack or copy.

If the A4 is indeed based on non-ARM architecture, then assuming the iPad is reasonably successful and the app developers successfully switch over to whatever build system is needed to create packages for both the A4 and iPhone ARM (ie. Universal Binaries, another Apple speciality) then I wouldn't be surprised if the next iPhone is also A4 rather than ARM based.