5 ms·

They found CPU, GPU and cache. What is in the remaining 40% of the chip? There are a lot of individual blocks in there.

MCRed 12y ago
This is where Apple really adds value and why they have their own silicon design teams. Some of the blocks: -- M7 motion chip -- Image processing chip to support camera -- (I suspect) audio processing chip to do compression and feature extraction for SIRI -- (suspect) video codec (though this may be done by GPU) -- Secure Enclave -- CPU with secure data, random number generator, Apple Pay support, Fingerprint Sensor support -- (I suspect) memory management units and io co-processors and the like that are too mundane to get much public mention
- nilsimsa 12y ago
  The motion chip is a separate package.
  - joezydeco 12y ago
    Chipworks decapped the M7 on the iphone5 and found it to be a custom model of the LPC18xx from NXP http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/blog/inside-the-iphone-5s/ http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/r... http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers/cortex_m3/lpc1800/ http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers/cortex_m3/lpc18...
- makomk 12y ago
  Hardware video codec support is almost always a seperate module, yeah, as are audio processing and video input/output.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
awalton 12y ago
A big part of what Chipworks does (as a company) is reverse engineering silicon from die shots and x-rays and such. They're not just going to hand this kind of information out on a platter - they were commissioned to do a cursory glance for this puff piece. But it also doesn't take a genius to guess at what the various hardware modules do just given what the iPhone can do.
szatkus 12y ago
Various units. You can get an idea looking at Snapdragon graph: http://www.gadgetfreak.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/snapdragon-810-die-shot.png http://www.gadgetfreak.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/snapdra...

MCRed 12y ago

This is where Apple really adds value and why they have their own silicon design teams. Some of the blocks: -- M7 motion chip -- Image processing chip to support camera -- (I suspect) audio processing chip to do compression and feature extraction for SIRI -- (suspect) video codec (though this may be done by GPU) -- Secure Enclave -- CPU with secure data, random number generator, Apple Pay support, Fingerprint Sensor support -- (I suspect) memory management units and io co-processors and the like that are too mundane to get much public mention

nilsimsa 12y ago
The motion chip is a separate package.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  Chipworks decapped the M7 on the iphone5 and found it to be a custom model of the LPC18xx from NXP http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/resources/blog/inside-the-iphone-5s/ http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-competitive-analysis/r... http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers/cortex_m3/lpc1800/ http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers/cortex_m3/lpc18...
makomk 12y ago
Hardware video codec support is almost always a seperate module, yeah, as are audio processing and video input/output.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

awalton 12y ago

A big part of what Chipworks does (as a company) is reverse engineering silicon from die shots and x-rays and such. They're not just going to hand this kind of information out on a platter - they were commissioned to do a cursory glance for this puff piece. But it also doesn't take a genius to guess at what the various hardware modules do just given what the iPhone can do.

szatkus 12y ago

Various units. You can get an idea looking at Snapdragon graph: http://www.gadgetfreak.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/snapdragon-810-die-shot.png http://www.gadgetfreak.gr/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/snapdra...