New iPad’s A5X Processor Is A Behemoth

In the desktop and laptop world, computer chips tend to get smaller over time, but with the A5X, Apple has gone a different route: they’ve actually made the chip bigger than its predecessors.

How big is the A5X? Over 310 percent bigger than the A4 shipped in the iPhone 4 and original iPad.

Though they are built upon the same 45 nanometer architecture, the A4 chip was only 53.3 mm square. Now compare that to the A5X, which measures in at a whopping 165 mm!

Of course, the A5X’s extra bloat mostly comes from the four massive cores of graphics helping to power that Retina Display. Still, this right here is why you won’t see the A5X in the iPhone 5: the smaller device doesn’t need that much graphics chutzpah, and even if it did, it couldn’t fit a chip this size inside its already jam packed innards anyway.

Check out some more images and a full breakdown over at Chipworks.

• Via iJailbreak

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