What the A5X is and why it’s called the A5X (editorial/opinion)

Why should I guess about this? Well, for one it’s extremely relevant and two, I’ve got an uncanny knack for guessing right; I guessed Mountain Lion’s name and release date, I guessed notification center for iPhone, I guessed the iPhone 4S. Personally I think that’s quite good for an average blogger. So what is the A5X, it is the leaked processor that we see on the Logic board of the iPad 3. Why is it important? The first point is that it’s not called the A6 and the second point that it’s going to be in the iPad 3.

PLEASE bear in mind that this is purely my opinion, but it shouldn’t be taken lightly!

I’m going to start with two of my option of what it could be and reasons why, I will explain this later in the article, enjoy!

1. The A5X is a higher clocked A5, supported by the improved heat sink around the processor. Probably within the 1.5GHz region as to give a significant speed improvements. Furthermore maybe  you will get a quad-core PowerCR GPU to drive the larger screen maybe a SGX543, 544 or even 545 in a multicore configuration. Truly a monster, and considering that Apple own part of Imagination Technologies early access to the SGX545 is not that unlikely! This of course though is kind of a disappointment as any graphical improvement and CPU clock speed would only decrease battery life, and not improve performance over the iPad 2 because of the increased amount of pixels to push.
2. This theory is a bit more out there, one that I’ve not seen before anywhere, You Heard It Here First! So My theory goes that the number before the processor determines the architecture of the processor not the actual processor itself, you can’t prove me wrong yet! The A4 used the Cortex A8 architecture, whereas the A5 used the Cortex A9-MPcore architecture. This Architecture is on the verge of being replaced by the Cortex-A15 which has not yet been shipped in any device, and most likely will not until June at the earliest. Apple didn’t want to wait that long so thus followed NVidia, and created a quad-core version of the A5 with improved graphics and a companion core and the much need ARMv7 core. All together this makes 10 main processing cores, thus the X. Or of course the X could just sound cool!

Which theory do I think is more likely. If I thought rationally then I would imagine Number 1 to more likely, but because of my out of the box thinking, and the fact that Apple don’t follow rational patterns theory 2 is just as likely, especially considering Apple like to wow people with specs, nobody thought last year that they would match the Xoom with a dual core processor and they did, surely they will match the prime with a quad-core, and furthermore to offer improved performance would be hard to do without significantly boosting their processor. Yet another point is Apple’s naming scheme, X is not normally used in terms of being cool but more in terms of architecture of number as in Mac OSX-> Mac OS10. The letter they use to signify speed improvement is S as in iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4S.

What does this mean for the future? I think that the iPhone 5/6 will launch on an A15 processor, named the A6 this will most likely stay dual core, as to reduce overall size and improve power efficiency, whereas the iPad 4 may well launch on an A6X continuing the quad-core pattern as to maximize the now quad core optimized iPad apps.

While I’m definitely know where near convinced with my wacky theory it does kind of make sense, if you agree comment below, if you don’t argue below and remember to share this post, we want more people reading my nonsense!!!