Teardown: The 4^th-Gen iPad unraveled

Memory, display
Apple is known for multi-sourcing its manufacturers of flash memory for each product. It could very well be Toshiba in one iPad and Samsung in another. In the case of our iPad 4, we found the same NAND flash that we also found in the 16GB model of the iPad 2 from Hynix. Hynix's H2DTDG8UD1MBR is a 16GB of NAND flash memory package that features two 64 Gbit dies to equal 16GB of memory.

Hynix LP DDR2 DRAM.

Hynix NAND flash—16GB.(click on image to enlarge).

Board shot, front, reveals Hynix 16GB NAND flash.

On the display side of things, Apple's Retina-based touchscreen incorporates some key design wins across numerous semiconductor manufacturers. These include Texas Instruments, which provides the touchscreen line driver, NXP Semiconductors getting a socket with its CBTL1608A1 display port multiplexer, and Parade's DP635 direct drive LCD timing controller. Integrated Memory Logic (iML)gets another design win for their iML7990 programmable gamma buffer (also used in the iPad 3) while RichTek's RT9910 acts as a power management IC for the touchscreen display.

Allan Yogasingam is a technical research manager at UBM TechInsights, owned by the same company that publishes EE Times, UBM plc.

Components revealed

IPad 4 board shot-back.

Communications board, front..

Communications board, back.

Communications board, display.

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