Difference Between Apple A5 and TI OMAP4460 Processors

Apple A5 vs TI OMAP4460 | OMAP 4460 vs Apple A5 Processors Speed, Performance
 

Apple A5 and Texas Instruments OMAP4460 are System-on-Chips (SoC) deployed in consumer electronics by Apple and Texas Instruments (TI) respectively. In a Layperson’s term, a SoC is a computer on a single IC (Integrated Circuit, aka chip). Technically, a SoC is an IC that integrates typical components on a computer (such as microprocessor, memory, input/output) and other systems that cater electronic and radio functionalities. Both Apple A5 and TI OMAP4460 are Multiprocessor System-on-Chip (MPSoC), where the design uses multiprocessor architecture for exploiting the available computing power. Apple released A5 in March 2011 with its iPad2 and TI’s OMAP (abbreviation for Open Multimedia Application Platform) 4460 came to the market in the last quarter of 2011. 

Typically, the major components of a SoC are its CPU (Central Processing Unit) and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit). The CPUs in both Apple A5 and TI OMAP4460 are based on ARM’s (Advanced RICS – Reduced Instruction Set Computer – Machine, developed by ARM Holdings) v7 ISA (Instruction Set Architecture, which is used as the starting place of designing a processor) and manufactured using a semiconductor technology known as TSMC’s (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) 45nm.

Apple A5

A5 was first sold in March 2011, when Apple released its latest tablet, iPad2. Later Apple’s recent iPhone clone, iPhone 4S was released equipped with Apple A5. Apple A5 was designed by Apple and manufactured by Samsung on behalf of Apple. As opposed to its predecessor Apple A4, A5 had dual cores in its both CPU and GPU. Therefore, technically Apple A5 is not just a SoC, but also an MPSoC (Multi Processor System on Chip). A5’s dual core CPU is based on ARM Cotex-A9 processor (that uses the same ARM v7 ISA that is used by Apple A4), and its dual core GPU is based on PowerVR SGX543MP2 graphics processor. A5’s CPU is typically clocked at 1GHz (the clocking uses frequency scaling; therefore, the clock speed can change from 800MHz to 1GHz, based on the load, targeting power saving), and its GPU is clocked at 200MHz. A5 has both L1 (instruction and data) and L2 cache memories. A5 comes with a 512MB DDR2 memory package that is typically clocked at 533MHz.

TI OMAP4460

OMAP4460 was released in the fourth quarter of 2011 and according to PDAdb.net it was first deployed in Archos’s ninth generation tablet PCs. It is the SoC of choice for the forthcoming (to be released in mid November 2011) Google’s Galaxy Nexus smart phone manufactured by Samsung for Google. The CPU used in OMAP4460 is ARM’s dual core Cotex A9 architecture and the GPU used was PowerVR’s SGX540. In OMAP4460, the CPU is clocked at 1.5GHz, and the GPU is clocked at 384MHz (a relatively very high frequency compared to the clocking of the same GPU in other SoCs where SGX540 was deployed). The chip was packed with both L1 and L2 cache hierarchies in its dual core CPU and is packaged with a 1GB DDR2 low power RAM.

A comparison between Apple A5 and TI OMAP4460 is tabulated below.

Summary

In summary, both Apple A5 and TI OMAP4460 have comparable features. Both of them used the same CPU architecture (with much higher clocking frequency in OMAP4460). The main difference between the two can be seen in their deployment of GPUs: While Apple A5 has used a new dual core GPU from PowerVR and clocked at a lower frequency, TI OMAP4460 has used an older GPU with a highly improved clock rate (Power SGX543MP2 @ 200MHz vs. PowerVR SGX540 @ 384MHz). Although, they both have to perform theoretically very similar, a thorough benchmarking should reveal the truth. Although, both have exactly similar CPU cache configurations, OMAP4460 has a larger (1GB vs. 512MB) memory and, therefore, will outperform for memory hungry applications.