iPhone 5′s A6 Chip Has Triple-Core Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

iPhone 5′s A6 Chip Has Triple-Core Graphics Processing Unit (GPU)

iPhone 5 is powered by Apple's next generation A6 system-on-chip, which Apple says is twice as fast as A5 chip that powers iPhone 4S. The A6 chip also offers graphics performance that’s up to twice as fast as the A5 chip. Early iPhone 5 benchmarks have revealed that it may be powered by a dual-core 1.02 GHz ARMv7 processor with 1GB RAM that has 33% faster memory bandwidth. It has also been speculated that Apple has used a custom designed ARM CPU core for iPhone 5's A6 chip. As far as the graphics processing unit (GPU) goes, AnandTech had speculated that Apple may have used a triple-core PowerVR SGX 543MP3 GPU rather than doubling the clock speed of the dual-core SGX 543MP2 found in the A5 for the iPhone 4S or using the quad-core SGX 543MP4 found in the A5X for the third-generation iPad. AnandTech now reports that the first diffusion images of Apple's new A6 SoC seems to confirm that it comes with triple-core GPU running at 266MHz as they had predicted. The image shows two 32-bit LPDDR2 memory channels and three GPU cores. We're likely looking at a PowerVR SGX 543MP3 running at 266MHz. UBM estimates the die size at 95.04mm2 and the manufacturer as Samsung. UBM TechInsights' Technical Research Manager Alan Yogasingam notes that "it's a very unique processor design which was expected from Apple's custom approach to it."