Under layers of source code, the fate of Apple products has been discovered. Right now the fastest processor in an iOS device is Apple’s 1 GHz dual-core A5 chip, which is found in the iPad 2. The company is expected to unveil the iPhone 5 soon — say, October 4th — with that same processor. But Apple has even bigger plans in mind.
Ars Technica got the scoop from a developer pointing out that what initially looks like random letters and numbers in Xcode actually hints at support for quad-core devices:
A developer who works on low-level ARM assembly coding for security products was the first to alert Ars that support had been added for Armada’s Cortex A9-compatible processors in the latest version of Xcode (a claim that we later confirmed first-hand). The source code for a part of Clang that interprets what CPU type is being targeted for optimization includes a definition for an architecture type of “
armv7k” and CPU type “pj4b“.
The latter is supposedly designed specifically for Marvell’s quad-core XP embedded processors. Whatever that processor is, we have to assume it’s speedy enough for a good experience, yet efficient enough for extensive battery life.
Will we see these bad boys make their way into Apple products by the end of this year? Not likely. Will we see them in products next year? Perhaps.
After the dual-core processors, Apple can only multiply from there unless they just increase the speed to 1.5 GHz. But a quad-core 1 GHz processor would be a welcome addition to any future iOS device. Another possibility is always a new ARM-based MacBook Air. We’ll only know for sure when this tiny bit of source code emerges into confirmed products.