New Nintendo DSi teardown

We have seen the first teardown photos of the brand new Nintendo DSi games console, courtesy of Bunnie.



In the mainboard, we can see the following circuits:
uPD 46128512AF1 Its a Mobile RAM of 128Mbit, 16 bit, as we can see in the NEC web:
46 Mobile RAM
128 128Mbit
512 16 bit
A Revision A
F1 Plastic BGA (Wire bonding)
There is even a datasheet of the 64Mbit part.
Its a DDR RAM but with a SRAM interface. This simplifies the ARM CPU, that doesn't need a dynamic RAM controller.

The NAND chip also includes the controller. It is a SAMSUNG MOVI NAND circuit, that presents a MMC interface to the host, also simplifing the ARM CPU. The capacity is 256Mbytes and the bus width 8 bits.
Doing part number decoding we have:
kmapf0000m-S998
KM MOVI NAND
A NAND + MCU
P 256 Mbytes 8bits bus
F S3C49VCX02

In the bottom left corner we have a chip without chipmaker identification. It is marked as: PAIC3000D. The name is similar to the TI codecs: AIC3, and it is near the earphone connector. I suposse that it is the sound codec chip.

In the right corner the chip from Mitsumi (MM3317A) seems to be the power supply + charger circuit. There is no clues in the Mitsumi web page.

ipod nano 4g and ipod touch 2g

Apple has launch new models of his well known music players: the iPod Nano 4G and the iPod Touch 2G.

iFixit is again the first to give us insight photos of the new models: iPod Nano 4G & iPod Touch 2G.

In the new models the circuit board is smaller and with less components. For example, in the Nano, the DDRAM is located on top of the processor instead of using a separate package.


In the iPod Touch 2G, iFixit found a Bluetooth + FM chip from Broadcom, the BCM4325, but it is not to give Bluetooth or FM funcionality but for the Nike+ ANT shoes interface.

As usual, well engineered products, with pretty good design and incredible shrinking PCBs.

More info: Nikkei Electronics Teardown

Another teardown of the iPhone 3g comes from Japan, by the Nikkei Electronics Teardown Squad.

Following the link you could see more images of the iPhone 3G teardown process.

New iPhone 3g teardown

We have the iPhone 3G teardown sooner than ever, with the ifixit guys going to New Zealand to be the first to open the device.



Later, Semiconductor Insights put their expertise decapping the chips, to know what chip is inside every Apple mark.


Fist analysis:

The processor circuit: the processor is the same in the previous iPhone. By the marking: 8900B, the processor is the S5L8900B (Samsung marking in the chip). An ARM11 processor found in its antecesor. The surprise is that the processor is not the new S3C6410 from Samsung, with the same peripherals but in 65nm instead of 90nm of the S5L8900. Probably too early to complete software debugging. It is a POP construction as its antecesor, with the DDR-SDRAM over the processor in POP format. There is also a serial 1MB flash from SST.

The phone circuit: The UMTS baseband is the PMB8878 from Infineon, with an Infineon UMTS transceiver, and the Infineon SMARTi power management unit. The power amplifier is from Skyworks SKY77340, filters from Murata, and an amplifier for each band from Triquint. The NOR Flash for the baseband processor program is from Numonyx (the new company created by ST Microelectronics and Intel integrating their memory divisions).

The touchscreen controller now uses only one chip instead of three. It comes from Broadcom: BCM5974.

The LVDSL serial interface for the display is again from National: LM2512AA.

The GPS chip is from Infineon, the great winner in this design.

The NAND flash memory is from Toshiba although it also could be the Samsung part.

The audio codec is again from Wolfson. Semiconductor Insights says that is the WM6180C but that is not a normal Wolfson code.

Now the design comes in only one, bigger board, instead of two. With the components almost only in one side. It is a challenge to design the board not being able to put capacitors behind the processor. I suppose the board must be at least of 10 layers.

Primary conclusions: Good, neat design. I'm afraid too power hungry, not being able to use the new processor from Samsung.

iPhone 3G

There were a lot of rumors about 3G iPhone. Now, in the latest beta firmware, Zibri has found a proof of 3G chipset in the design. In the current design, the GSM/EDGE chipset comes from Infineon: SGOLD2 (PMB8876). In the code found by Zibri, there is a trace of a SGOLD3 chip.

The SGOLD3 comes in two flavours: PMB8877, an GSM/EDGE chip, and the more powerful 3G HSDPA SGOLD3H PMB8878. All people likes to see the SGOLD3H as the 3G solution, pointed by the code. There is no need to change to the SGOLD3 PMB8877 because the new features are not used by the iPhone, with its own multimedia Samsung processor. That's why I think that the SGOLD3H could be the chip in the already coming (June) 3G iPhone.

I think that all the delay in the launch of the 3G iPhone was related to power consumption and battery life. The iPhone has a lot of processors inside to make it modular and fast to market, but that leads to power hungry designs. It is not the best possible design. With 3G, it is even worse. It seems that the solution comes from the display and the 3G iPhone will come with an OLED display, that consume less power than conventional TFTs, and Apple has finally get the correct numbers.

Nowadays, hardware designs are more modular, and less optimized. It is the same that happened to software design a lot of years before. To get to market on time with complex design we relay in already working modules. That leads to big, plenty of processors, power hungry designs. Continuous improvement in circuit integration makes that work, the same way that continuously more power hardware computers make possible to use non optimized software in the past.

The important thing is to get to maket on time, but sometimes it is not so easy, and the long road could lead you to destiny first.

New Zune 2 teardown

We have got images of the new Zune 2 80GB player from Microsoft, courtesy of Rapid Repair.

We see a better designed product, not just a reference design transcription like Zune 1. The processor is now an i.MX32 instead of the i.MX31. There is very little information of this processor in the Freescale Web, only a block diagram. It seems to be very similar to the i.MX31, but with SRAM memory inside the chip and a better hardware multimedia player. As the i.MX31, it is an ARM1136JF 532MHz with floating point processor.

You can see the main board in this photograph:

- U1 is the dynamic RAM memory, in this case a Mobile DDR 512Mbit (64MByte) 32bit bus, from Hynix (old Hyundai). You can find the datasheet here.

- U2 is a Hi-speed USB Transceiver from SMSC, the USB3316B-CP. You can find the datasheet here.

- U3 is a DC/DC boost converter 1.8A 3.3V from Texas Instruments, exactly the TPS63001DRC. You can find the datasheet here.

- U4 is a 250mA Low dropout regulator from Texas Instruments, exactly the TPS73201. You can find the datasheet here.

- U5 is the i.MX32 ARM1136JF 532MHz processor. You can find the block diagram here.
- U6 is a power manager with audio codec from Wolfson, the WM8350. You can find a data brief here.

- U7 is a Flash memory from ST. There is no more information about it.

These are the only identified integrated circuits till now. If we get better images we can identify more circuits.

See you.

New Samsung ARM Processor User Manual

The brand new Aplication Processor from Samsung is ready to get into production. Samsung is now sampling it to certain customers.

For those of you that can't wait to read more about this powerful chip, follow this link and get the full user manual/datasheet:

Rapidshare download link

Although in a lot of websites, you could read that is the processor in the iPhone, that is not true. The footprint, the peripherals and the memory map are different. For example, the S3C6400 doesn't have the PowerVR MBX 3D processor.

It is not the same chip that goes in the iPhone but is very similar: same core and some common peripherals. It has a powerful ARM1176JZF-S at 533MHz with H.264 video aceleration, TFT and TV output, USB OTG 2.0 HS and a NAND Flash controller able to boot directly from NAND Flash, among its features.

Looking for see it in new interesting devices for the beginning of this new year.

In 2009, the ARM Cortex-A8 processors and the new Intel, x86 based, PC-on-a-chip Moorestown platform, will fight for the new portable gadgets and the Mobile Internet Device (MID) category of devices.