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Comment by czhiddy | Hacker News Reader

The iPad4 doesn't pack an A7.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_A6X

True, but I don't follow how that's connected to my comment... maybe I should explain the background of my comment.

  The iPhone 5S (A7) has x1 the graphics power as the iPad 4.
  The iPad 5    (A7) has x2 the graphics power of the iPad 4.

So... how to get double the graphics power out of the same SoC (A7)? That was the puzzle (likely ans: x2 frequency)

You may be incorrectly assuming all A7 SoCs are identical. The Apple TV has an A5, but it's only single core, unlike it's dual core phone and tablet brethren. Maybe they just dropped the X moniker.

If you have a look at my original comment, I suggested that: "Have they just stopped using the A7X style name?"

oh, right. I think that's the answer.

You could be right, but have a read of the review I linked above, search for the text I quoted, and read around that. To me, it's compelling that the iPhone 5S's GPU is severely underclocked, leaving headroom for reuse in the iPad 5. And of course higher-clocking is usual in iPads, with their larger battery.

BONUS: for next year, the G6630 gives 50% performance increase + the expected node shrink allows a further ~30% overclock. 1.5*1.3 = 1.95 ~ 2.0.

For the following year, they could go for G6630MP2 (the 6 clusters can be multicored as a whole). Next (three years from now), they could go G6630MP3 plus another node shrink. By that time, there could be 8/10 clusters available G6830, G6A30 etc, and an entirely new architecture in the works, though probably not yet available.

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