[Openmcl-devel] iPad?

[Paul Krueger]

Ok, what I had read earlier about the A4 being a Power architecture  
was speculation based on the fact that PA Semi made it and they had  
previously produced Power chips. But it looks like Andrew is correct  
that it is an ARM. I did a bit more web searching and discovered this  
statement:

"It seems unlikely that Apple has invented something completely new  
with the A4, and while P.A. Semi’s experience was with the Power  
architecture, the iPhone, with which the iPad has much in common, uses  
an ARM CPU. It’s likely then that the A4 uses an ARM core – rumours  
reported by Bright Side of News and iFixit suggest that it’s the  
Cortex-A9 MPCore. This is the same ARM core used by Nvidia in its  
upcoming Tegra 2 SOC design (and it means our guess on Twitter that  
the iPad would be Tegra 2 powered is pretty close!) Little is known  
about the A4’s graphics, although as with the iPhone 3G and 3GS, it  
will be compliant with Open GL ES."

So that effectively kills the idea I fear.

Paul

On Jan 28, 2010, at 10:42 AM, Paul Krueger wrote:

> Of course if it's not an ARM, how do they run existing iPhone  
> apps?   hmmmm...
>
> On Jan 28, 2010, at 10:37 AM, Paul Krueger wrote:
>
>> On Jan 28, 2010, at 10:24 AM, Andrew Shalit wrote:
>>
>>> The A4 is some kind of ARM, so this would at minimum require an ARM
>>> port.  Of course, we don't know what changes Apple has made to the
>>> A4 relative to other ARMs, and Apple probably wouldn't tell us, so
>>> that would be tricky.  But if anyone wants to fund an ARM port, we'd
>>> be more than happy to look into it.
>>
>> My understanding is that the A4 is NOT an ARM, but rather a Power
>> architecture which CCL already supports. That's one of the reasons I
>> got more excited about it. Has anyone seen a definitive statement  
>> from
>> Apple abou this?
>>
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