Apple A5 vs Texas Instruments OMAP 4460

Apple A5

The Apple A5 is a dual-core processor that contains two Cortex A9 cores. Each core is max. clocked at 900 MHz. Furthermore, the A5 integrates a relative fast PowerVR SGX 543MP2 graphics card and 512MB ram (in the same package for the iPad 2). Apple states a maximum of 2x the performance compared to the previous single core Apple A4.

Texas Instruments OMAP 4460

The OMAP 4460 is a fourth generation SoC (System on Chip) developed by Texas Instruments (TI) for use in mobile phones and tablets. The 45 nm chip includes dual ARM Cortex-A9 CPU cores running at 1.2 GHz up to 1.5 GHz on an ARM v7 instruction set and ARM NEON SIMD (Single instruction, multiple data) engine. 

The SoC integrates an SGX540 GPU from PowerVR clocked at 384 MHz, which can utilize the same 400 MHz dual-channel LPDDR2 memory controller as the two core processors. Compared to the OMAP 4430, the 4460 is clocked higher on both the CPU and GPU.

The OMAP 4460 is found in a small number of tablets and smartphones, most notably the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7. In terms of raw processing and GPU power, the SoC is more in line with the Nvidia Tegra 2 than the Tegra 3. The integrated SGX540 is an older generation of graphics that has been largely superceded by the much more powerful SGX543 as found in the third generation iPad.