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Analysts: iPad 4's graphics upgrade packs a punch

Chip analysts say the fourth-generation iPad is far from being an incremental upgrade, thanks to a brand-new graphics engine that's a serious step up in horsepower.
At its silicon core, the fourth-generation iPad is hardly an incremental upgrade, according to chip analysts.

The new iPad's A6X chip packs a brand-new graphics engine that boasts a serious step up in horsepower from the third-generation iPad's A5X.

"Nothing's incremental about this. The A6X is one massive processing machine," Jim Morrison, a product manager at Chipworks, which does reverse engineering and patent-infringement analysis of semiconductors and electronic systems, told CNET.

Chipworks posted an analysis of the A6X's circuit layout today.

Apple's newest chip is a full 30 percent larger than the A6 used in the iPhone 5, according to Chipworks. And most of that extra chip real estate has been allocated to graphics silicon. Chipworks wrote in its posted analysis:

    The A6X uses the identical [central processing unit of] the A6...Much of the extra area has gone to the GPU cores...each of these GPU cores is much larger...The overall area occupied by the A6X [graphics processing unit] cores is more than double that of the A6.