

iPad 3 4G Teardown - shawndumas
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad-3-4G-Teardown/8277/1

======
ajross
Hm... the battery numbers are surprising. The battery is 43.5Wh, which is
huge. Over 9.5 hours us "use", that comes to 4.6W average. My Dell XPS 15
L501x (very much not a "light" machine!) has a 9-cell 91Wh battery and got
about 5 hours continuous on it when it was new, for about 18.2W.

So the iPad 3 is drawing 25% the current of a beefy 2.9GHz Arrandale laptop?
That's shockingly high, IMHO, especially considering that the screen area of
the 15.6" laptop is twice that of the tablet.

Similar, the numbers they show aren't much higher than the range (30-50Wh, 6-9
hours) already achieved by a bunch of netbooks on the market.

~~~
snowwrestler
With LED backlighting, isn't most of the screen's power draw driven by the
switching? And the iPad has a lot of pixels to switch--almost certainly more
than your Dell laptop.

~~~
ajross
Honestly I'm no expert. But I'd find it very surprising if there was much
difference at the same lumens output. The backlight is not per-pixel in a LED-
backlit display (maybe you're thinking of OLED displays?), though I understand
it's often per-region to allow large dark areas to be under-lit.

And note that LED backlights are routinely put up as having overall _lower_
power consumption than CCFL panels like the one in my laptop.

Really my point is this: that's a laptop-sized battery in that thing, and it's
seeing only slightly super-laptop power draw.

~~~
acqq
Your point misses the mark: with the 1/2 of the battery of your notebook iPad
moves 50% more pixels for twice as long:

It's 2 * 1.5 * 2 = 6 times more efficient than your notebook. Of course, usage
patterns are also different, but it's still wonderful piece of engineering.

~~~
ajross
More efficient only in your oddball unit of pixels-joules/second. I'm not
interested in arguing about features or the design tradeoffs of an Apple
device, that always leads to a platform flame just like this one.

I'm saying that the _actual power draw of the iPad_ is much, much closer to
that of a laptop than most of us expected.

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rauljara
And 1GB of ram confirmed. Apple's policy of not mentioning the ram made sense
to me when they started, because it did seem like a amount of ram in the
initial model (256mb). But they've doubled the ram with each new generation
and made no mention of it. I guess apple has just made the calculation that 1)
it doesn't matter to most consumers (the ipad is supposed to be magic), and 2)
they'll be outspeced by the competition over the lifetime of the model,
anyway.

~~~
jad
The reason is because they view it as a consumer electronics device. How much
RAM is in your DVD player?

~~~
InclinedPlane
RAM on a tablet affects performance in a very straightforward way. Why mention
any specs if it's just a "consumer electronics device"?

I think the reason they don't mention RAM is because they don't want to get in
a silly numbers based arms race. They want to say "here's the whole package,
it's pretty great, and better than the other guy's stuff, even if some of his
specs are a little better on paper".

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joezydeco
Wow, beautiful photographs. They always do a great job.

Has anyone looked closer at the A5X package in these pictures? Is that a
glimpse of PC board under that can? Is there some kind of multi-die package
(and not just POP)?

~~~
wmf
Although the heat spreader is oddly shaped, the A5X isn't big enough to
justify more than one die. I wonder why they unstacked the RAM; I would
imagine either for thermal reasons or for more memory bandwidth.

~~~
joezydeco
They added a picture of the chip with the heat spreader off. It's one massive
die.

<http://guide-images.ifixit.net/igi/i6ZlJCQfdaHyktRY.medium>

~~~
wmf
Anand estimates 117 sq. mm. which seems reasonable to me.
[http://www.anandtech.com/show/5681/apples-a5x-die-and-
size-r...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/5681/apples-a5x-die-and-size-
revealed)

~~~
joezydeco
The RAM is on the opposite side of the board. Go figure.

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dreadsword
I love these teardowns - so superfluous, and yet so compelling nonetheless.

~~~
allwein
The thing that I love about these teardowns, and which really stands out to
me, is how well designed Apple's products are internally as well as
externally. If you compare the teardowns between the iPad and the HP Touchpad
( [http://www.techrepublic.com/photos/cracking-open-the-hp-
touc...](http://www.techrepublic.com/photos/cracking-open-the-hp-
touchpad/6253940?seq=19&tag=thumbnail-view-selector;get-photo-roto) ), it's
pretty clear why Apple has such a lead in tablet manufacturing efficiency and
cost.

~~~
ceejayoz
The reasons for Apple's leadership in battery life become clear, as well.

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lancefisher
I want to know if they successfully got it back together.

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Steko
From page 3 Step 18:

"Like the A5, the A5X system features a 1 GHz dual-core CPU. The upgrade that
earns it an 'X' is the new GPU, which Apple claims outperforms even Nvidia's
Tegra 3 processor."

Considering that even last year's A5 outperforms Tegra 3 on many benchmarks
casting aspersions here seems meritless. You might quibble with Apple's 4x
claim but that is not how this reads.

------
jvdh
oh my god, they're doing these in real-time, and they're server is suffering
under the load too.

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Steko
Anand, estimating by die size, says A5X looks like 28/32 nm.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/5681/apples-a5x-die-and-
size-r...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/5681/apples-a5x-die-and-size-
revealed)

Qualcomm's chip is confirmed as still being the 45 nm model.

[http://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/08/new-ipad-appears-to-
util...](http://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/08/new-ipad-appears-to-utilize-
qualcomms-mdm9600-baseband-chip/)

So for next year's iPad we can expect a tock architechture update (to A-15)
for the SoC and a tick process shrink for the baseband chip. Not sure how many
batteries they'll be able to throw out but hopefully some and it'll be thin
again.

------
swalsh
Did anyone see how many WAN antennas it has?

~~~
18pfsmt
Looks like 3 according to this picture: <http://guide-
images.ifixit.net/igi/MIEhlvVuGWrPGUQw.large>

------
shawndumas
"There isn't much difference between the old and new version of the A5: an "x"
in the name and an extra 0.2 GHz clock speed." --
<http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPad-3-4G-Teardown/8277/2>

~~~
6ren
GPU within it went from dual to quad-core. Maybe it also upgraded from SGX543
to SGX544 or SGX554. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerVR#Series_5XT> Hard to
teardown a SoC.

~~~
shabble
Hard _er_ , to be sure, but definitely possible.

See
[http://www.lps.umd.edu/MicroelectronicsIntegration/Microelec...](http://www.lps.umd.edu/MicroelectronicsIntegration/MicroelectronicsCOTS.html)
and <http://www.break-ic.com/topics/break-ic.asp> for 2 overviews.

There is an entire industry built around decapping and reverse-engineering
ICs, usually to make cheap clones in China or somewhere else that'll turn a
blind eye to IP infringement.

There's also 'Dr. Decapitator' of ROM extraction fame:
<http://decap.mameworld.info/>

Annoyingly, I can't find the article I remember reading, which was a look at
the debugging / test labs at AMD or Intel. They had all manner of depackaging,
imaging, probing, and even in-situ modification tools. They could cut traces
with incredibly precise laser pulses, and use bond-wires or additional metal
deposits to test faulty designs. Incredible stuff (and a nightmare for anyone
who wants "tamper resistance")

------
nik_0_0
Question, the Samsung LCD display they linked to shows a 1024x768, not the
2048 resolution of the iPad, what gives?

~~~
axylone
I think they mean the model number, LTN097QL01-A02, is a samsung model number.
The 1024x768 lcd in the linked document has model number LTN097XL01-A01.

