But the hardware is interesting. For starters, there's the microprocessor. It's a new one, designed internally at Apple, tagged the 1GHz Apple A4 chip.
Remember Apple's acquisition in 2008 of chip company P.A. Semi, founded by Dan Dobberpuhl, formerly of Digital Equipment Corp.? IEEE Member Dobberpuhl designed the DEC Alpha and Strong-ARM microprocessors, and received the 2003 IEEE Solid-State Circuits Award for his work. Last summer, the rumor mill speculated that Dobberpuhl was running a team of low-power experts to design a chip that would give a cell-phone higher power and longer battery life than its competitors. It looks like instead of a cell phone, Dobberpuhl has been working on the iPad project. If that's the case, given his track record, this is good news for this new product.
Photo: Apple
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