Apple this year, when revealing its devices, was interested in reviewing the new processors, as the iPhone 5 came with the powerful A6 processor, which although it is dual-core, but it outperformed most devices in the market with quad-core processors, then came the iPad 4 and the most prominent change in it was the A6x processor brother of the i-processor The largest iPhone, so what is this new "A6" processor? What do the terminology we often hear like ARM and others mean? Why are phone processors different from those in the personal computer?
Technical information about A6:
The A6 processor is of the SOC processor category, the abbreviation of System On chip, which means (a chip that contains a system), as a large part of the processors that manage smart devices have become of this type, and it means that the chip contains all the main components that the processor needs to work, in other words, simplified for approximation It is a processor with a motherboard integrated together on a single chip.
This processor works with an efficiency equivalent to twice the efficiency of the previous processor for the iPhone 4S, where the name of the processor was A5, and the iPhone 5 processor consists of two ARM Processor Dual Cores, in other words, it contains two processors on one chip and also contains three GPU processors, which means “Graphical” Processor Unit - graphics processing unit “This processor works at a frequency of 1.3GHz, as well as the three processors for graphics operate at a frequency of 266GHZ of the PowerVR SGX 543MP3, and the processor contains 1GB memory manufactured by Elpida; This is a picture of the radiologist showing its components from the inside (the process of taking such an image is very complex and needs high techniques)
The processor came from Apple's design, but the manufacturer is Samsung, and there are some leaks talked about Apple's intention to rely more on itself in making the processor, as some developers have stated that the processor does not depend on the famous ARM Cortex-A15, but rather depends on an ARM processor, then Apple has To develop it until it came out in its current final form.
What is ARM processor?
I mentioned a lot while talking about the name of the ARM processor, so what is this processor?
The ARM processor is one of the most popular processors today and is of the SOC type, as we mentioned earlier, any system on a single chip, and it has many advantages, including its low energy consumption and its use by many companies in the manufacture of smart devices where these companies buy the ARM processor and use it directly on The motherboard of the device or combined with another processing unit, like what Apple does, as it combined it with more than one processor to produce one chip and names it with its own names, such as the name A6, which in fact contains two processors based on the ARM architecture.
In 1990, more than one billion devices around the world were using the ARM processor, and generally more than 30 billion processors of this type were sold and every day more than 16 million ARM processors were sold. The following image shows the A6 processor's speed over the rest of the known hardware processors.
Less is better
The difference between the phone processor and the computer processor
Computers use x86 processors, and this is in office devices such as a laptop computer, whether it is running on Windows or an Apple Mac, and phones come with ARM processors, so can we say that one of these processors is better than the other ?!
The answer to this question is not possible, as Intel, which produces the processors used in laptop, desktop and servers, also produces the Atom processor, which can be used in tablets and mobile devices, and also produces processors dedicated to working with network processors and other types, thus making it different from ARM processors. That was explained its interest a little while ago in smart devices and tablets. But the two companies are very strong in their competitors in terms of the two most important points, which are the production of good processors with less consumption, lower price and smaller space, because this is the basis of competition. Most of the analyzes indicate the cheap price of ARM processors compared to the Intel processor, as well as the energy consumption is clearly lower, most likely this is what made the greatest spread in smart portable devices (phones and tablets) tend to use ARM products because they need to reduce the price and extend the life of the device and they are available in a processor. ARM is better than Intet.
Another very important point that must be taken into account is that the type of applications and hardware determines the choice of the type of processor. Applications that run on ARM processors will not work on x86 processors (such as Intel) unless they are re-developed to fit the processor for which they are made. For the same reason, applications that run on Windows 8 on the computer will not work on Windows 8 phones because one is designed to work on an ARM processor and the other on x86.
Some sites interested in technology news for processors indicated that the war had begun between Intel and ARM, in reference to the intensity of competition between the two companies, especially in this period of great prosperity in portable smart devices such as tablets and mobile phones, especially that Intel is striving to reduce the energy consumption of its processors, which is What made Microsoft offer a version of Surface that comes with an Intel processor and another ARM, and this shows that Intel has started the steps to compete with ARM in its stadium. Some rumors indicated that Apple is planning to get rid of Intel processors and rely on ARM in the future.
It is also mentioned that there are other large companies that produce powerful processors such as Qualcomm and Nvidia, and the internal structure of these companies' processors depends on ARM processors, and these companies have gained great fame, for example Qualcomm has developed processors for many famous devices such as:
- LG Optimus ™ G
- Windows Phone 8X by HTC
- Droid RAZR MAXX HD by Motorola
- Nokia Lumia 920
- HTC EVO ™ 4G LTE
- Dell XPS 10 (tablet
- Samsung ATIV Tab (tablet
- (Samsung Galaxy Tab ™ 8.9 (tablet
Most of us might buy devices without knowing what processor is used and also the graphics engine, but this matter is very important, as it largely determines the speed of the device in your hands, so you may find a device from Samsung and another from Sony working with a processor of the same frequency (1.5 gigabytes, for example) and with the same operating system then You find one of them is faster than the other, and this is because there are many factors that determine the speed of the device, such as the type of processor used (not the speed), as well as memory and other factors, and the similarity of the numbers does not mean that the results will be the same as well.
Article author: Anmar Burhan Muhammad - Technical College - Mosul
Source | wikipedia
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