iFixit Teardown of the New Apple A6 Chip

Posted September 25, 2012 at 3:52pm by iClarified | Please help us and submit a translation by clicking here | 8618 views

iFixit and Chipworks have partnered to post a teardown of the new Apple A6 chip used in the iPhone 5.

Geeks rejoice! We have partnered with Chipworks for a double-the-geeks, double-the-fun teardown of Apple's new A6 Processor. The A6 is rumored to make use of two custom 1 GHz CPUs running the ARMv7s instruction set. Along our journey into the A6, we'll also give you a sneak peak at some of the fun toys instruments at Chipworks.

Highlights:
● The A6's 1GB LP DDR2 SDRAM is provided by Elpida
● The Apple A6-labeled APL0598 on the package marks and APL0589B01 on the inside-is fabricated by Samsung on their 32 nm CMOS process and measures 9.70 mm x 9.97 mm.
● It looks like the ARM core blocks were laid out manually--as in, by hand. A manual layout will usually result in faster processing speeds, but it is much more expensive and time consuming.

Check out a few photos below and hit the link for the entire teardown which also looks at other chips found in the iPhone 5.

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