Apple's Phil Schiller introduces the A6 processor at last week's event.
(Credit: James Martin/CNET)
How did Apple arrive at the A6 chip in the iPhone 5? A longtime chip analyst documents the long and winding road.
While endorsing a report that the A6 is a unique Apple design, Linley Gwennap, who heads The Linley Group, a chip consultancy, posted a brief history of the A6's chip development in a research note on Saturday.
Some of the history has been documented before, but other parts are not as well known.
Gwennap's firm is the publisher of the Microprocessor Report and it frequently holds conferences on mobile chips.
Here are some of the highlights of Gwennap's post:
- StrongARM: Apple's interest doing its own central processing unit (CPU) design dates back to its $278 million acquisition of PA Semi in April 2008. Some of the team members had previously worked on low-power StrongArm processors under PA Semi CEO Dan Dobberpuhl at Digital Equipment (DEC) in the 1990s. The "CPU design team had developed a high-performance PowerPC processor under the leadership of Ji... [Read more]
via CNET http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/cnet/NnTv/~3/SfBr63q31Zk/
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