e"}

Get Better Gear!

Premier Sponsors

Other World Computing

TechRestore

Top 5 Free Apps

Release Date: August 05, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: May 22, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: August 29, 2009
Genre: Games
Release Date: March 27, 2009
Release Date: August 07, 2009

iTunes New Music Releases

Release Date: September 29, 2009
Genre: Rock
Release Date: September 20, 2009
Release Date: September 15, 2009
Release Date: August 25, 2009
Genre: Rock
Release Date: August 25, 2009

Top 5 Paid Apps

Release Date: April 22, 2009
StickWars $0.99
Release Date: March 31, 2009
Genre: Games
Bloons $0.99
Release Date: April 05, 2009
Genre: Games

Discover New Music

  • Pretty Hate Machine

    • 8 out of 10
    • Nine Inch Nails
    • For years I wanted to make music that sounded like something between Love and Rockets and Ministry. In 1989, Trent Reznor beat me to it with this genre-defining album, and it smacked me upside the hea
  • Physical Graffiti

    • 10 out of 10
    • Led Zeppelin
    • This album bears every flavor of genius from the five records that came before. It is, I believe, the band's finest. With Physical Graffiti, Zep came raging back to their musical home territory -- har
  • Quadrophenia

    • 10 out of 10
    • The Who
    • Quadrophenia is everything that Tommy wanted to be, a rock opera that told a story, but one where every song could still stand alone. It was also Pete Townshend's farewell tribute to the Mod

  • Go Away White

    • 10 out of 10
    • Bauhaus
    • Go Away White is an album I've been waiting more than 20 years to hear, and the good news is that it was worth the wait.  The latest -- and last, no...for real this time -- album from

  • One Word Extinguisher

    • 8 out of 10
    • Prefuse 73
    • It's an album about a breakup, done with beats instead of mopey lyrics. But the beats are raw, and the emotions are there, even if there aren't many words on top of it. While possibly not Scott Herren

Reader Specials

Visit Deals On The Web for the best deals on all consumer electronics, iPods, and more!

News

EDN: iPhone is Precisely Designed

A disassembly of the iPhone found it to be very precisely designed. Multiple CPUs take on different tasks, and software functionality has been chosen in preference to hardware performance. It’s doubtful that there’s a large degree of automated assembly in China, according to EDN.

What was most impressive was the use of the volume, getting Wi-Fi, BlueTooth, GSM cellular data and voice, a position sensor, a CPU, and a lot of volatile and nonvolatile memory into a very small package. EDN’s Senior Technical editor, with help from Portelligent, said that anyone would be impressed with Apple’s electrical and mechanical engineering teams.

The 3.7V lithium-ion battery takes up a considerable about of the iPhone’s volume which makes the design all the more impressive.

The key components are:

  • ARM1176JZF with TrustZone, with a clock at perhaps 600 MHz
  • ARM Intelligent Energy Manager
  • 16-kbyte/16-kbyte code/data cache
  • Vector floating point coprocessor
  • ARM Jazelle-enabled for embedded-Java execution
  • SIMD high performance integer CPU with an eight-stage pipeline, capable of 675 Dhrystones/sec and 2.1 MIPS
  • 0.45 mW/MHz power draw (with cache)

Also of note is the partition of tasks in the iPhone. It appears that the iPhone has multiple CPU units that subdivide tasks and take on different roles. When those units aren’t engaged, they can be powered down.

It also appears the Apple engineers made a conscious decision to not rely too much on hardwired circuits -- even though they would deliver higher performance and lower power consumption. The goal seems to have been to trade that against increased future flexibility and functionality with software. That’s something we all suspected, but is now confirmed.

There is much more detail in the tear down report, and it is notable for its engineering detail, perhaps even more detail than many will want to know about the iPhone internals.

Post Your Comments

  Remember Me  Forgot your password?

Not a member? Register now. You can post comments without logging in, but they'll show up as a "guest" post.

Commenting is not available in this section entry.