Difference Between Apple A5 and TI OMAP4430 Processors

Apple A5 and Texas Instruments OMAP4430 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 OMAP4430 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) 4430 came to the market around the same time. 

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 OMAP4430 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 has 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 OMAP 4430

OMAP 4430 was released in the first quarter of 2011 and according to PDAdb.net it was deployed first in BlackBerry’s Playbook. Many other devices such phones, PDAs and tablets, later used it. PandaBoard, a famous community supported academic development board, has OMAP 4430 as its main processor. The CPU used in OMAP 4430 is ARM’s dual core Cotex A9 architecture and the GPU used was PowerVR’s SGX540. In OMAP 4430, the CPU is clocked at 1GHz, and the GPU is clocked at 304MHz (which is relatively higher compared to the clocking of the same GPU in other SoCs where SGX540 was deployed). The chip is 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 OMAP4430 is tabulated below.

Summary

In summary, both Apple A5 and TI OMAP4430 have comparable features. Given that they were released around the same time, they have utilized similar technologies of that era. Both of them use the same CPU architecture (with similar clocking frequency). 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, TI OMAP4430 has used an older GPU with a highly improved clock rate (Power SGX543MP2 @ 200MHz vs. PowerVR SGX540 @ 304MHz). The GPU configuration used by Apple A5 is expected to outperform the one used by TI OMAP4430. Although, both have exactly similar CPU cache configurations, OMAP4430 has a larger (1GB vs. 512MB) memory and, therefore, will outperform for memory hungry applications.