Apple uses multi-GPU in iPad 2 and iPhone 5?

Never mind that Steve Jobs will be taking a step backwards in his official capacity at Apple to concentrate on his health – we know that the company’s roadmap for the year ahead is more or less set in stone, what with the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 being prepared for the masses. Well, word has it that the iPad 2’s alleged 2048-by-1536 resolution Retina Display could very well be powered by a dual-core  graphics processor, or “GPU”. Think of this as SLI/Crossfire inside a chip.The iPhone 5 will also run on the (tentatively named) A5 chip, which is Apple’s very own upgrade and successor to their A4 that currently makes sure the iPad, the iPhone 4, the Apple TV, and the fourth-generation iPod touch will run with nary a hitch.

The A5 will be a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design which is touted to comprise of two different parts – one being a multicore ARM Cortex-A9 processor, while being paired with an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics and video core (MP2 means that there are two SGX543 graphics cores on the same die/package). This could produce 3X the graphics performance of the iPhone 4 or iPad (on paper, at least).

It’s probable that iPad 2 gets multi-GPUs, but the iPhone 5 won’t, for thermal and power consumption reasons.

We can only wait, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the next iterations of either device will definitely be developed with the intention of blowing your mind away.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Apple, Rumors, Top Stories
Tags: Apple Inc, GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), iPad 2, ipad2, iPhone, iPhone 5