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iPhone 5 A6 SoC Teardown: ARM Cores Appear To Be Laid Out By Hand
MrSeb writes "Reverse engineering company Chipworks has completed its initial microscopic analysis of Apple's new A6 SoC (found in the iPhone 5), and there are some rather interesting findings. First, there's a tri-core GPU — and then there's a custom, hand-made dual-core ARM CPU. Hand-made chips are very rare nowadays, with Chipworks reporting that it hasn't seen a non-Intel hand-made chip for 'years.' The advantage of hand-drawn chips is that they can be more efficient and capable of higher clock speeds — but they take a lot longer (and cost a lot more) to design. Perhaps this is finally the answer to what PA Semi's engineers have been doing at Apple since the company was acquired back in 2008..."
Pretty picture of the chip after using an Ion Beam to remove the casing. The question I have is how it's less expensive (in the long run) to lay a chip out by hand once instead of improving your VLSI layout software forever. NP classification notwithstanding.
That must be a very fine tipped resist pen...
Android users usually get laid by hand.
Actually not only is that one hand made, each and every A6 is lovingly hand made. That's why they're top quality.
and their tech section is run by taco so it could be counted as a sort of pseudo-slashdot effect they have as well
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
This is not by hand.
To take a programming analogy, it's looking at what the compiler generated, and then giving it hints so the resultant code/chip is laid out as you expect.
Chips stopped being able to be laid out 'properly' by hand some time ago.
Doing this has much the same benefits as doing it with code.
You know stuff the compiler does not.
You can spot silly stuff it's doing, that is not wrong, but suboptimal, and hold its hand.
Or grab its ARM.
But they are not lovingly hand made on the thighs of Virgins... That is reserved for El Presidente' Processors.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Display is LG. Flash is mostly Hynix and Toshiiba.
Yeah, but the software is Samsung, and everyone knows that's what really counts.
The CPU is manufactured by Samsung, and that's what really counts for Fandroids.
Nah, I was referring to the well sourced fact that iOS is actually just a gimped version of Android.
Remember Schmidt was on the Apple board, and he provided preview copies of Android to Jobs.
They're made into nutritional supplements that you can pick up in a rectangular bar form
With rounded corners?
You need that extra few percent.
That's why our compilers go to 11.
-- Posted from my parent's basement