Here’s an interesting little detail from the latest version of Xcode: it supports Marvell’s quad-core, ARM compliant Armada XP processor. Could Apple be preparing to ditch its own A-Series of systems-on-chip and go instead with Marvell for future iPhones and iPads?
Well, hold your horses. While prototype iOS devices may well be running on an off-the-shelf Marvell quad-core ARM chip, Apple’s almost certainly going to produce a quad-core chip of its own in the A6 next year.
As Ars notes:
n Armada XP-powered prototype logic board would allow iOS or Mac OS X software engineers to experiment with performance tuning and other optimizations, while Apple’s hardware design team—comprised largely of former PA Semi and Intrinsity engineers—could continue working on a possible quad-core ARM design to be manufactured somewhere down the road.
In other words, this is probably just evidence of what everyone already guessed: that Apple’s A-Series of chips will be keeping up with the rest of the ARM world and go quad-core sometime soon. As you were.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
