ARM "Might" Be Involved In Apple A4 Processor

While the A4 chip at the centre of the recently heralded iPad device has been a mystery for the geeks around the world, chip maker ARM’s chief executive Warren East has dropped a hint about the inclusion of ARM’s architecture within the enigmatic chip, the Guardian reported.

In an interview with the newspaper, East asserted that the A4 chip might include an advanced processor from ARM, but declined to ascertain straight away that the chip incorporates ARM’s intellectual property.

As ARM chips are massively being used in mobile phones and other handheld devices, including iPhone and iPod, it is being speculated that the A4 chip in the iPad also incorporates an ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore processor, which is similar to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor, which powers Nexus One phone from Google.

“I would doubt whether anybody other than Apple has taken the iPad to bits yet. But in a month or so it will be available and somebody other than Apple will take it to bits - and then we will know”, the newspaper quoted him as saying.

Further dropping a clue on the likely inclusion of ARM’s processor, he said: “I have seen all the same speculation that you have seen and I can point out the fact that they [Apple] publicised the fact that it runs Apple iPhone and iPod Touch applications straight off and from that you can do some inferring”.