AnandTech has published another of their typically thorough reviews, this time on the latest iteration of the Apple TV and its minor CPU tweak.
It could very well be that Apple is finally selling enough Apple TVs to warrant a custom A5 of its own rather than continue to ship die harvested A5s from iPhones/iPads. The problem with relying exclusively on die harvesting is that eventually, as yields improve, you end up selling fully functional (and unnecessarily expensive) silicon into a market that’s unwilling to pay for the added performance.
That first sentence made me think. Are they finally selling enough to warrant the custom chip, or do they expect to sell a whole lot more of them really soon?
Time will tell.