Jon Stokes at Ars has an interesting take on the iPad's A4 processor. He says it doesn't have ARM's next-generation Cortex A9 design which supports multicore processors. It is in fact an ARM Cortex A8 design which is along the same lines as the current iPhone 3GS, iPod touch as well as the Palm Pre, Droid, etc.
As I watched the videos and read the reports of the iPad in action at the launch event, I was thoroughly convinced that the device was built on the out-of-order Cortex A9, possibly even a dual-core version. But it turns out that the the A4 is a 1GHz
