A5: All Apple, part mystery

Paul Boldt and Don Scansen
4/13/2011 8:00 AM EDT

Apple Inc.'s iPad2 has only been publicly available for about a month. However, it appears this young device has kept few secrets since we have known there were 21 magnets in the smart cover and saw a die floorplan of the A5 within mere days of its release. The flurry of the first wave of disassembly and dissection seems to have died down while we might assume that some very detailed circuit analysis is likely just beginning to be scoped out.

When the A4 was subjected to the same procedure just under one year ago, there was a sense it was going to underwhelm anyone expecting a unique design because so little time had passed between Apple ramping up its design team with the acquisition of PA Semi and the release date. There simply wasn't time to generate a new design. The A5 is a different story. Another year has passed.

The A5 is also the second data point in terms of design strategy for Apple's iOS SoC. While two data points constitute a streak only in baseball, this second design would have had sufficient time for Apple to be moving in the direction they want. So how did the A5 fare? Has it met expectations at this early stage of the analysis?

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