When Apple officially announced the iPhone 5 earlier this week, the company revealed that their iOS-based smartphone had the A6 processor inside. Apple didn't reveal any specific details about the design or the specs behind the A6, but it did give some general information about its performance with iOS apps, showing performance improvements of between 1.7 and 2.1 times compared to previous versions of the iPhone.
Now, AnandTech reports, via unnamed sources, that the A6 chip in the iPhone 5, while still using an ARM-inspired architecture, was in fact designed by Apple itself. Previously, the processors in older versions of the iPhone had used designs that were licensed from ARM, such as the Cortex A9 used in the A5 processor.
However, the article states that Apple also has a license from ARM to receive an instruction set architecture that Apple can then use to create their own design. Apple appears to have done exactly that for the A6 processor inside the iPhone 5. using the ARMv7 ISA.
While that's certainly a change from Apple's normal iPhone processor route, there's no specifics on what features the A6 processor has, such as the number of actual processor cores.
Source: AnandTech | Image via Apple
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