Apple's A6 Details and Timeline Emerge

MojoKid writes "For a CPU that hasn't seen the light of day, there's a great deal of debate surrounding Apple's A6 and the suggestion that it may not appear until later in 2012. The A6 is a complex bit of hardware. Rumors indicate that the chip is a quad-core Cortex-A9 CPU built on 28nm at TSMC and utilizing 3D fabrication technology. While the Cortex-A9 is a proven design, Apple's A6 will be one of the first 28nm chips on the market. The chip will serve as a test case for TSMC's introduction of both 28nm gate-last technology and 3D chip stacking. This is actually TSMC's first effort with an Apple device. The A4 and A5 have both historically been manufactured by Samsung."

Quad Core is not just for handhelds

[SethJohnson]

Apple has been twisting Intel's arm (that IS a pun) about power consumption and threatening to dump their chips in favor of ARM. Another way Intel limits Apple is that their product cycles are tied to Intel's product cycles, which constrains Apple to a parity with other laptop vendors. By moving to a homebrewed CPU, it would give Apple even more architectural control / freedom which would assist in differentiating Apple products from their competition.

Funny how it all comes full circle. Apple suffered from having its unique RISC architecture for many years. Then Apple conformed to X86 for just a few years and leveraged that to get enough marketshare that they can move back to an independent architecture again.

Seth