Apple A4 Vs A5 Processor
The new Apple A5 processor is a part of the new iPad 2 and is also expected to be in iPhone 5. Apple claims it is twice as fast as the A4 processor, which was released with the original iPad, and they also say it is capable of generating nine times the graphical power of the A4. If you have seen images of some games on the iPad 2, you will agree with this statement since the level of graphical details is a huge improvement over the previous version.
Both of these are SoC processors (System on Chip) and they combine the CPU and the GPU units. The A4 was manufactured by Samsung and it contained a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 CPU which was paired with a PowerVR SGX535 GPU, and it was built to carry a battery life of around 10 hours which the original iPad comfortably delivered. The new A5 processor contains a 1GHz dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU and it is paired with a dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU, which is considerably stronger than the previous version. Industrial sources claim that it costs 75% more than the A4 processor but the prices are expected to drop as more devices start housing it. Additionally, the A5 is manufactured by Apple themselves, and this is another reason for the higher price.
Apple A4 Vs A5 Chip
One major source of disappointment is that even though the A5 processor has a dual-core system, it is clocked at a much lesser speed. The extra power that goes into working the GPU eats into the battery life of the device, and as of now it is speculated that the iPad 2 has a lesser battery life than the iPad. The difference may not be too large to cause concern, but for people who use their tablets extensively, it can be troublesome. Right now we cannot compare the iPhone 4 battery life with the iPhone 5 either, but we hope that this issue does not plague the smartphone market as well since we need a smartphone that can last at least 24 hours on a single charge.
Some benchmark tests carried out by industry experts point out that each of the cores of the A5 processor work around 10% slower than the single core of the A4 processor, and this is something that is not acceptable. Interestingly, these tests also show that the iPad 2 does not actually clock speeds of 1GHz like the original iPad, but oscillates between 861MHz and 894MHz instead. While the dual-core nature of the processor leads to a faster performance, the downside is that the battery life suffers as a result of this.
The faster speed that is experienced on the iPad 2 can also be attributed to the 512MB of RAM that the tablet contains, vis-a-vis the 256MB of RAM on the original iPad. While this is not the sole reason for twice the speed, it does play a telling role in the performance of the device. The A4 processor was announced by Apple on January 27, 2010 and it is found in the iPad, the iPhone 4, the iPod Touch 4 and the TV 2nd generation device as well. The A5 processor was released along with the iPad 2 on March 2, 2011 and as of now this is the only device it is found in. The iPhone 5 will most probably contain this SoC as well, though this has not yet been confirmed by Apple Inc. We can even expect the A5 to be present on the iPot Touch fifth generation as and when it is announced.
This comparison is still in its early stages, so it is still too soon to make some solid conclusions. The performance and the graphical output is certainly improved, but this can also be attributed to the dual-core nature of the chip and the increased amount of RAM. The battery life is lower than the A4 though, and this could play against Apple. As more devices start shipping with this chip, we can start deriving more conclusions, but there is no doubt that the A5 is an improvement over the A4 processor.
