Processor Speed?

[eliehass]

Just curious as to the speed of the processor and what kind of processor it is... This would lead up to the question of what kinds of applications can we expect to see when the SDK comes out... (if the processor is fast enough, we may even see the iphone/ipod touch become apples "portable gaming system"/a real pocket computer.)

 

[mac57]

Well, from this link:

http://www.maclife.com/article/news...iphones_processor_is_identified_and_much_more

we see:

It appears that the chip powering the iPhone is, as we guessed, an XScale processor, but it's from the Marvell Technology Group and not Intel; Intel sold the XScale design to that Santa Clara, CA company last year. No matter - one blogger goes so far as to suggest that Apple's new slogan should be "Thanks to OS X, the CPU is irrelevant." He may have a point.

But from here (more current):

http://www.engadget.com/2007/07/01/iphone-processor-found-620mhz-arm/

we see:

Looks like today's morning's firmware leak turned up some well hidden details about the iPhone's hardware engine -- and also confirming some reports we'd previously received. From what we can tell, it looks like the iPhone's got a 620MHz ARM chip running under the hood. Specifics:

* ARM1176JZF chip with TrustZone (enables trusted computing environment for media, apps, network, OS, etc. -- very bad for hackers)

* Can vary in clock speed up to 700MHz or more, depending on implementation (thanks, Nigma)

* ARM Intelligent Energy Manager (claimed to reduce power consumption 25-50% in portables)

* 16K / 16K cache

* Features vector floating point coprocessor ("for embedded 3D-graphics")

* ARM Jazelle enabled for embedded Java execution (hmm...)

* SIMD, high perf integer CPU (8-stage pipeline, 675 Dhrystone, 2.1 MIPS)

* 0.45 mW/MHz power draw (with cache)

Whatever it is Apple's got that thing doing, they're doing it right. Thus far our iPhone battery life tests have far exceeded expectations (more on that soon).

Update: Sascha at Gear Log seems to think given the recently discovered Samsung chip in the iPhone, perhaps the processor in question is a Samsung S3C6400, a recently-produced 667MHz ARM1176JZF-based CPU that seems to fit the bill.