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An analysis of the internals of Apple's third-generation iPadreveal some small changes to the design of the device, such as aswitch to discrete DRAM devices, the addition of a heat spreader ontop of the A5X chip and a possible move to a flip-chip solution. Anandtech published a preliminary technical analysis a of the new iPad on Thursday based on iFixit's teardown of the device. Report author Anand Lal Shimpi said the tablet's internals were"mostly what we expected," including the Qualcomm MDM9600 LTEbaseband. However, working from images of the third-generationiPad's insides, he did surmise that Apple is now using "twodiscrete DRAM devices" for its A5 SoC, instead of a PoP(Package-on-Package) stack. The two 512MB Elpida LP-DDR2 devices were located "on the side ofthe PCB that doesn't feature the A5X," he said. The DRAM devicescarried a part number of B4064B2MA-8D-F, but Lal Shimpi was unableto identify detailed specifications by reading the part numbers. Another change reported by the publication was the addition of ametal heat spreader to the A5X. Lal Shimpi took the to mean thatApple had "made the shift from a wire bond package to flip-chip,"the process of flipping a chip top face down to connect it toexternal circuitry. "Moving to a flip-chip BGA package allows for better removal ofheat (the active logic is closer to the heatsink), as well asenabling more IO pins/balls on the package itself," he said. However, Lal Shimpi did note that Apple may have already usedflip-chip in the previous-generation A5 and "simply hidden it underthe PoP stack." The report went on to estimate the die size of the new A5X chip. Bycomparing Apple's new SoC with the Toshiba eMMC NAND next to it,Lal Shimpi deduced that the A5X die measured roughly 10.8mm x 10.8mm, or 117.5mm^2. Anandtech had previously guessed a 125mm^2 die for the A5X. He assumed thatthe A5X is built on a 28/32nm process, but he also warned thatthere was "a lot of estimation" in his methodology. Apple's new A5X has the same clock speed as its predecessor, butfeatures double the RAM and a new quad-core graphics processor. According to iFixit'steardown, the CPU was built by Samsung and is believed to have beenmanufactured during the first week of 2012. Samsung alsomanufactured the Retina Display found in the new iPad used for theteardown. The third-generation iPad launches in 10 countries at 8 a.m. local time on Friday, though some retailers began selling the device at midnight. I am an expert from exhibition-boothdisplay.com, while we provides the quality product, such as 10x20 Trade Show Booth , Modular Exhibits Manufacturer, Modular Booth Systems,and more.
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