
Apple's A4 dissected, discussed...and tantalizing - rpledge
http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700447
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grinich
Here is a link to the non-paginated version:
[http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700447...](http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=225700447&pgno=all&printable=true&printable=true)

I also just noticed that Safari 5's Reader feature will grab the next page as
you scroll down. Awesome.

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Groxx
Yeah, that's the main reason I've quit using the Readability bookmarklet.
Auto-loading is a killer feature.

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tel
Marco, if you can get that into Instapaper it'd be godsend. Well, Marcosend.

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mikecane
Anyone here know how the A4 compares to the upcoming Tegra 2? It's interesting
most of the A4 is based on a Samsung design. Would this mean Samsung's own
upcoming Android tablet will have the power on an iPad?

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wmf
Tegra 2 ought to be about 3x the raw performance of A4, but I suspect it will
be significantly higher power.

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nl
The power comparison is slightly misleading, because Tegra2 has powerful video
decoders on-chip, while the Apple products use a separate PowerVX chip. If you
aren't using that I'd be surprised if Tegra2 was significantly more power
hungry than A4. There's some reasonably informed speculation here:
<http://www.anandtech.com/show/2911>

Regarding the OP's question of iPad vs Samsung tablets: Yes, Samsung (or just
about anyone) can build hardware as fast as the iPad. Any Cortex A8 chip
(Snapdragon, OMAP3xxx etc) is roughly comparable.

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sliverstorm
I've always wondered, can people actually look at the images of the die and
understand what's going on? Do different components of a chip always take the
same shape?

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anamax
It's not shape, it's more "texture" and connectivity.

The untrained eye can distinguish memory, which is very regular, from other
things. The trained eye can distinguish some of those other things.

You can also partition by texture. Knowing the identify of some things helps
you identify what they're connected to.

The more that you identify, the more constrained the possibilities are for the
remaining things.

