An electron microscope ìteardownî by UBM TechInsights has yielded interesting details about the new Apple A5 system-on-a-chip (SOC) powering the iPad 2. Recent benchmarking has shown that it significantly outpaces the NVIDIA Tegra 2 processor in the Motorola Xoom and other upcoming Android 3.0 tablets by some margin, particularly in its graphics performance. Part of the reason for the performance differential can be found in the cost of the chips to manufacture. Apple has apparently spared no expense by incorporating a chip that currently costs $25 per chip to manuf
