ZDnet brings word of a possible four-core iPhone being developed by Apple. The information explains that while Apple’s current iPhone does well with gaming, a move into multi-core processing coupled with iPhone firmware 3.0 could bring dramatically increased power.
As MacRumors points out, Imagination Technologies is announcing a new version of its its graphics chip IP. “The PowerVR SGX543 is the firm’s first multi-core capable GPU technology which scales to, in theory, an unlimited number of cores and offer support for GPGPU acceleration,” tgdaily explains. Apple is an investor in Imagination Technologies, and currently uses a version of their PowerVR GPU in the iPhone and iPod touch, albeit less powerful than what we may see in the future.
Jason D. O’Grady explains: One of the most interesting rumors I’ve been tracking here at Macworld Expo in San Francisco surrounds the mysterious four-core iPhone. While the current iPhone has (roughly) the processing power of the Sony PSP, an upgraded four core iPhone would slaughter pretty much every portable gaming platform on the market. The other part of the story is firmware 3.0, which is said to be required on the iPhone “quad.”
Rounding out the possibility of future multi-core iPhones, Apple’s acquisition of P.A. Semi brings to light their intentions with developing chips that consume less power. “The likely candidate for the new iPhone’s CPU, however, is a derivative of the ARM Cortex A9 multi-core processor. The ARM Cortex has excellent power efficiency, well ahead of Intel’s Atom offerings,” MacRumors reiterates. Computerworld’s Seth Weintraub kicked off some previous speculation about Apple’s future offerings in the netbook category. Surely a multi-core, lower power consumption chip would be at the forefront of this design, however we may see it in future iPhones, not netbooks.
3 Comments to “iPhone Firmware 3.0 and Future Multi-Core iPhones”
I need to be able to send and receive pictures directly to my iphone and I need to be able to open word documents, excell and powerpoint. I just bought the iphone yesterday and the rep forgot to tell me about these little important quirks!!!!! Will the new Firmware 3.0 be able to facilitate these basic important features?
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Jeff: You can already do all that, in several different ways.
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The 3.0 firmware offers many new improvements to its capabilities. Like Yoav said, you can do all those things with your current iphone, but you have to get apps from either the app store or other methods (which you would find word, excell, MMS, powerpoint, etc). The 3.0 firmware will have MMS (send and receive pictures) from your normal text with previews of the pictures right in your chat box. Do a youtube search and you can see videos of all the new features.
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