The Apple Watch’s S1 chip looks great under X-ray

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The Apple Watch sure looks cool under X-Ray. Photo: Chipworks
The Apple Watch sure looks cool under X-Ray. Photo: Chipworks

For anybody who wants a detailed look at what makes the Apple Watch’s chip tick, the silicon experts at Chipworks have posted an X-ray look inside the S1 processor.

The first thing Chipworks noticed about the new Apple device is that, given all the new and proprietary technology integrated into the S1, this is a far more sophisticated gadget than the wearables we’ve seen to date. Most Android Wear watches, for example, run off old, off-the-shelf chips, while the S1 was designed from the ground up for the Apple Watch.

Photo: Chipworks
Photo: Chipworks

Taking an X-ray to the Apple Watch, Chipworks noticed a STMicroelectronics 3mm-by-3mm land grid array (LGA) package with a 3-D digital gyroscope and accelerometer located in a top left corner socket. There was also an Analog Devices screen controller, and a Texas Instruments OPA2376 Precision op-amp driving the Apple Watch heart rate sensor module.

How all this technology works will have to be worked out over time. What doesn’t need to be worked out, though, is just how cool the Apple Watch looks under an X-ray.

Source: Chipworks

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