What Can We Learn From The iPad About Chip Design?

By _Cadence - Logic Design

February 2, 2010

You probably heard that Apple announced a touchscreen tablet computer last week.

The announcement came with a lot of talk of it defining a new product category. That's somewhat laughable, since tablet computers have been around for a few years.

BUT - the previous tablet computers were all based on notebook architectures and processors. They have essentially been notebook PC's enhanced with touchscreens and swivel displays. For a platform to be useful as a tablet, it has to be much more graphics-intensive than a traditional PC (no keyboard!) with faster response times (you need immediate feedback that you did in fact press the virtual buttons).This translates to more CPU horsepower. At the same time, a tablet needs to have better battery life than a notebook, hopefully using a smaller and lighter battery. Now this is a tall order.

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