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Apple A4 Teardown

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Back when the original iPhone came out, we worked with some friends of ours in Silicon Valley to dissect the processor. The equipment we used wasn't nearly as cutting-edge as what Chipworks has, but it got the job done.

This is a silicon wafer. Each small square is a chip, called a die. The processor die in the A4 is 7.3 mm on each side, for a 53 square mm total area. The percent of working dies that you can get from a wafer like this is called the yield.

The A4 is actually much more than just a processor— it's a Package on Package, or PoP. In fact, there are three silicon dies inside the A4!

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