[aicjofs]

.
Bored waiting for jailbreak, went ahead and tore down my new ATV3.

-The A5 looks like APL2498. Judging what I have seen from iFixit for the N43V211 1207 N, the 1207 is manufacture year-week so 7th week of 2012. Of course there is another VTKC8017Q 1205, so perhaps 5th week of 2012. Seems to be a dual core with one core disabled. 32nm process, same CPU as iPad2,4(the $399 "new" iPad2)

http://www.chipworks.com/en/technical-co...-surprise/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5740/apple...ualcore-a5
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5742/apple...5l8942-soc

-Also from the internet it seems the RAM is Hynix, H9TKNNN4K, what a quick search yielded was 512MB. I believe its the same RAM as the Kindle Fire, or at least so says the internet via iFixit, the Kindle Fire has OMP at the end(probably because its piggybacked onto the TI OMAP), where it look like ours has DMRCR at the end. I found nothing on the Hynix site less this: http://www.hynix.com/products/mobile/mob...MobileDDR2 At least going somewhat by the naming convention, a 4G is 4Gb(512MB), this one says 4K like Kindle Fire so it's not a stretch.

-The Flash looks like Toshiba THGVX1G6D2HL A01, looking at this page as a guide to decipher the numbers: http://www.toshiba.com/taec/Catalog/Line...id=1768484 it looks like 6 represents 8GB. No suprise there.

-SMSC LAN9730 USB to 10/100 ethernet http://www.smsc.com/index.php?tid=292&pid=326

-If you look at the 2nd picture you can see the Wifi module, I didn't feel like trying to get the heat spreader/EMI shield off it as it's soldered on. I do however notice what looks to be a 2nd antenna that ATV2 didn't have, MIMO, spacial stream, 5Ghz? Would be nice to help those trying to do 1080p over Wifi.

-TXC Mm3v 27.00

-TXC Mp3G 25.00

Anyone else have some input?

EDIT: The good folks over at iFixit got the cover off the Wifi its a BCM4330, go check it out!! http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Apple-TV-...own/8293/1
Anandtech Review: http://www.anandtech.com/show/5687/apple...ini-review

BCM4330 a/b/g/n 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz Wifi, Bluetooth 4.0 http://www.broadcom.com/products/Wireles...ns/BCM4330

EDIT2: Is this die different dimensions the the original A5? A true single core, not a dual with one core disabled? Same marking as iPad2,4? http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid...pid1050672

more pics around the net:
http://www.anandtech.com/Gallery/Album/1825








Larger image: http://home.comcast.net/~aicjofs/ATV3.JPG



Apple A5
WiFi Module(unknown so far)
Toshiba THGVX1G6D2HL
Apple 343S0479
Apple 338S1040 A5
Antennas(opaque ovals)


SMSC LAN9730 USB2 to 10/100 Ethernet

[Ned Scott]

kick ass! That additional RAM alone will be a godsend to XBMC.

[aicjofs]

.

Forum only allows 6 images a post, wanted to add one more of the antenna area. The ATV2 seemed to have only one antenna looking at old images. This looks like 2, I like the fact there appears to be an improvement to the Wifi, as the N of the last model was the Broadcom 4329 with one spatial and MCS 7, maybe 60mbps real world. Alot of people complaining about 1080p decoding were using that awful wireless. Sorry for blurry image, was trying to shine a light through the PCB so antennas were easily seen and it was messing with focus.

[gulo101]

so do we know anything about the performance of this A5 vs A4 in ATV2 ?

My understanding is that A5 has always been used in dual core configuration while this one is single core.

[dfiler]

Thanks for posting the info.

It is about what I expected and is excellent news in my opinion. An A5 and double the RAM should make xbmc much more reaponsive. Unless post processing is desired, this may have reached the good enoug level for all types of media playback on a tv. Meaning, until we move past 1080p as a standard, this level of performance may be all that is needed.

[aicjofs]

so do we know anything about the performance of this A5 vs A4 in ATV2 ?

My understanding is that A5 has always been used in dual core configuration while this one is single core.

Just from guesses, we have seen no real world results. Seems almost hard to believe they chose single core from the fact you have to ramp a whole new production line, masks etc. Then again if this chip was a chip for iPad2 and i4 and truly made in 2012 I imagine the wafer yield has to be at least 95%, figure the odds of the defect falling in the ARM portion of the die, they just wouldn't have enough chips for the ATV3. The RAM and the GPU I think will be the biggest benefit to us.

@dfiler

Thanks for the kind remarks. I'm with you, the ATV2 is so very close to a good experience for me that just a little more under the hood may be all I need for the foreseeable future. Don't everyone go quoting me on the 512MB, haha. It's HARD to read that silk screening but it sure looks like H9TKNNN4K, and every google hit I saw said 512MB.

On a side note a bit of depressing news from MuscleNerd about jailbreaking the ATV3, sounds like he says it will be the hardest. Basically because its so simple it lacks as many areas to try and find an exploit.

https://twitter.com/#!/musclenerd

[ZombieRobot]

Good job lets hope your right about the RAM and fingers crossed that the ATV3 will get jailbroken at some stage

[frieten]

thanks! i've been refreshing the entire internet trying to find this lol thanks for your effort!

with 512mb of ram its a goer for me to upgrade. will make it a lot faster just going thru menus which is one of the main bog down issues for me with the atv2.

can pretty much guarentee the A5 is just a single core dual core. IE they just switched off a core. they wouldn't reproduce a whole new chip that was single core. it would be like amd does with there chips, like the X3 which has 3 cores enabled but can unlock to 4 cores in some instances.

wouldn't be suprised if some of these can be unlocked to run on dual core as well.

[Devil_Inside]

Great post, thank you for all the info!

[CpTHOOK]

Although no JB yet, after reading this post I went ahead and got one. The tear down pics are appreciated lets me know what it looks like and whats under the hood since mine will stay in the plastic until an exploit is released. Thanks for the post!

[HansMayer]

Nice work. Let's hope it will be jailbroken soon so we can run XBMC on it

[BORIStheBLADE]

Thanks for the pictures!!

[xbs08]

Thanks
I'm considering buying one.

[sidewalksuper]

Great stuff!! Already ordered one, so I'm very pleased to see it's got double the ram. That should be more than sufficient of an upgrade for the experience.

[Chris!]

And now macrumors has picked up on this thread.

This thread would make a nice XBMC front page news story.