Apple iPhone Block Diagram

Naturally, the big story today is Apple's unveiling of the much anticipated iPhone. It's a very sexy and functional looking piece of hardware. Sadly, there has been little talk about it's technical specifications and internals. Apple has only said that "It runs OSX" and "It's Intel based." Beyond that, there's just pure speculation. So, I'm going to speculate.

For the processor, I'd imagine it's probably one of Intel's XScale (ARM) chips, now manufactured and supported by Marvell. Depending on Apple's architecture choices, it's probably a PXA270 or PXA900. If they go with a PXA270, then the audio/video decoding will have to come from an external chip, but the PXA900 has multimedia logic in the processor, making it a much better candidate, especially with all of the compositing effects that Apple will be doing.

For WiFi/Bluetooth interfacing, they could go with either Broadcom or Marvell. Apple has used Broadcom chips in all of their desktop/laptop offerings for the last few years, so it would make sense to see them continue that business partnership. On the other hand, Marvell is building all of the XScale hardware now, and would be more likely to work with Apple to come up with a more integrated solution, possibly built-in to the processor.

A GSM/GPRS/EDGE chip is unlikely considering that Broadcom and Marvell both produce complete cellular hardware. Broadcom already has chips that support Cellular/WiFi/Bluetooth all on the same chip and it's not beyond Marvell's abilities to build such a device.

If my many assumptions about the iPhone's design are correct, the block diagram should look something like the image on the right.

We'll know for sure when Apple starts releasing developer documentation for the iPhone... I know that there are plenty of people really excited to start writing apps for it.

# Apple iPhone Block Diagram

Naturally, the big story today is Apple's unveiling of the much anticipated <a href="http://www.apple.com/iphone/">iPhone</a>. It's a very sexy and functional looking piece of hardware. Sadly, there has been little talk about it's technical specifications and internals. Apple has only said that "It runs OSX" and "It's Intel based." Beyond that, there's just pure speculation. So, I'm going to speculate.

For the processor, I'd imagine it's probably one of <a href="http://www.intel.com/">Intel</a>'s XScale (ARM) chips, now manufactured and supported by <a href="http://www.marvell.com/">Marvell</a>. Depending on Apple's architecture choices, it's probably a PXA270 or PXA900. If they go with a PXA270, then the audio/video decoding will have to come from an external chip, but the PXA900 has multimedia logic in the processor, making it a much better candidate, especially with all of the compositing effects that Apple will be doing.

For WiFi/Bluetooth interfacing, they could go with either <a href="http://www.broadcom.com/">Broadcom</a> or Marvell. Apple has used Broadcom chips in all of their desktop/laptop offerings for the last few years, so it would make sense to see them continue that business partnership. On the other hand, Marvell is building all of the XScale hardware now, and would be more likely to work with Apple to come up with a more integrated solution, possibly built-in to the processor.

If my many assumptions about the iPhone's design are correct, the block diagram should look something like the image on the right.

We'll know for sure when Apple starts releasing developer documentation for the iPhone... I know that there are plenty of people really excited to start writing apps for it.