Apple's A6 chip sports 3-core graphics
Apple's A6 graphics silicon boasts three processor cores.
We learn a little more about the Apple processor inside the iPhone 5 every day. Today, the focus is the graphics processing unit.
UMB TechInsights has looked inside the chip, and review site Anandtech has followed up with an analysis claiming a 3-core GPU, which is likely a PowerVR SGX 543MP3 running at 266MHz, according to the chip-review site.
All of this makes for a fast A6 chip. Preliminary benchmarks show roughly twice the performance of Apple's A5.
Note that though the A5X chip in the third-generation iPad has a quad-core GPU (one more GPU core than the A6), it has an older -- and slower -- CPU (central processing unit). Both the A5 series processors and A6 have two CPU cores.
And who makes the A6 for Apple? Tech Insights surmises that it's Samsung. "An early analysis of...the A6 reveal markings that are similar to the Samsung markings found in the A4 and A5 processors," TechInsights said.