Chipworks reverse engineers the Apple A5 processor

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

Chipworks has reversed engineered the Apple A5 processor used in the iPad2. They decapsulated the A5 a couple of days ago, but as you could see in those early pictures, you can’t tell much of a chip’s layout from the top metal – it’s all power and ground buses.  So they had to de-layer the chip down to a level to see the block layout of the chip; not an easy