We’ve already seen the Apple Watch get torn apart by iFixit, giving us an inside look at the Taptic Engine, Digital Crown, and (mostly) battery, and now ABI Research has gone a level further and opened up the custom designed S1 chip that is the brains of the Apple Watch…
As part of its Teardowns Market Research effort, ABI illustrates each component packed into the tiny, weather resistant module including WiFi, Bluetooth, and NFC radios.
The photo also reveals 512 MB of RAM sourced from Elpida, 8GB of flash storage sourced from SanDisk/Toshiba, and the integrated accelerometer/gyroscope sensor. The real brains of the S1 chip can be found in a customer Apple processor labeled APL 0778. As you can see, the S1’s main processor makes up a fraction of the already ultra compact system.
Apple describes the Watch’s S1 chip as “an entire computer system on a single chip” that it encapsulates in resin to add to its durability and withstand the elements. This contributes to the Apple Watch’s IPX7 water-resistance rating, which we saw tested on launch day with 15 minutes of water submersion not impacting the performance. For scale, the S1’s main processor makes up a fraction of the already ultra compact system.
Tiny ARM processor:
Yes, that's a golf ball and 20 pin ARM Cortex M0, 1.6×2.0mm, $0.75
No chance of hand soldering. pic.twitter.com/bAQdaI4LYX
— @joewalnes@mstdn.social (@joewalnes) April 30, 2015
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TYPO (par. 3) ” … can be found in a customer Apple processor …”
(please remove my comment when fixed)
1 Word . . . .
AppleCare!
:)
This is the most interesting part of the Watch. As of the last iPhone, all of this stuff needed a logic board, now it’s all inside a chip the size of the original A4. This will help make the innards of the iPhone and iPad much smaller so they can “pour” more battery into them. Or make them wafer thin.
Problem is, the S1 is not very powerful. For a more powerful system you will still need a normal logic board. Though it might not be that far off considering the size of the New Macbook logic board. Who knows?
Oh yeah, this is just the beginning. The S1 was the best they could (wanted to) do at the time of hardware commitment. They most likely already have an S2 and S3 at different levels of completion in their labs.
Seeing miniaturization from the densely packed boards of the MacBook and S1 has me excited for what they can do with the rest of the line up.
I want to see what Apple can do with a bluetooth headset, preferably small enough not to stick out of the ear that much. This way no one can here what Siri is telling you.
You can always just turn off voice feedback (except when handsfree) in Siri settings.
Amazing!