Inside the iPhone 5: What makes it tick

Apple's A6 chip is big step up from the A5, according to analysts. Qualcomm's newest 4G LTE silicon is a major improvement too.

The Apple A6 chip. The combo CDMA-LTE Qualcomm chip is at bottom.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple's revamp of the iPhone included an overhaul of the inside too. So, what new silicon did Apple drop into the iPhone 5's chassis?

A6 chip: It's faster! (duh). Here's a summary of what Apple says. "Up to twice as fast compared with the [iPhone 4S' A5 chip]...The A6 chip also offers graphics performance that's up to twice as fast as the A5."

Problem is, Apple doesn't say much beyond that. So, I asked Anand Shimpi from chip review site Anandtech. While some of it's guesswork until reviewers decap the chip, Anand is usually on the money.

Based on the performance gains, he believes the A6 is based on an ARM Cortex-A15 design. That's the latest and greatest from ARM, the chip architecture that powers virtually all of world's major-brand smartphones.

This is pretty big because, if true, it means Apple's chip is truly cutting edge. "It looks like Apple has integrated two ARM Cortex A15 cores on Samsung's [32 nanometer manufacturing] process. This is a huge deal because it means Apple beat both [Texas Instruments] and Samsung on bringing A15s to market," he wrote in a blog post today.

The graphics processing unit is less clear but Anand believes it could be using four Imagination PowerVR SGX543 cores, doubling the GPU core count in theiPhone 4S.

Another analyst believes Apple is able to balance increased performance with decent battery life because of tweaks done independent of the main central processing unit, or CPU.

"In order to get double the performance but still have good battery life, more than likely it's because they have beefed up peripheral cores," said Francis Sideco, an analyst at IHS iSuppli. "Those are GPUs, accelerators that are peripheral to the main core," he said.

Source: CNET News