iPad Also Debuts Apple A4 Custom-built System-on-a-Chip for iPad

While Apple’s current generation iPhone 3GS and iPod touch G3 use ARM Cortex A8 CPUs and PowerVR SGX GPUs chips from Samsung, as part of their iPad announcement today, Apple also announced their own chip — the Apple A4. Custom chipsets have been on Apple’s agenda since they bought PA Semi (Palo Alto Semiconductor) and Steve Jobs flat out said they’d be used in future Apple mobile devices. That future, it seems, starts now. Battery life — 10hrs for the iPad — was stated as a prime reason for going with a custom chip. As is typical for Apple, they didn’t give any details (and likely the reason they’re making their own chips is so that they can keep those sorts of things secret from the competition), but since they’re rumored to be a massive ARM licensee, and owns part of PowerVR maker Imagine, we’re going to go out on a limb and guess those are still the CPU and GPU respectively.