Secrecy around Apple's new 64-bit A7 chip may have incited spurious $AAPL stock downgrades
Apple's iPhone 5s announcement included a surprise leap to a new 64-bit ARM chip architecture, a subject that has sparked lots of confusion and misinformation. But the secrecy surrounding the A7 may also have fooled analysts into slashing their sales expectations and downgrading the company's stock targets.
A variety of details are still unknown about Apple's A7 implementation. This includes exactly what CPU cores it is uses (it may be a extension of Apple's custom Swift cores in the A6, now implementing the 64-bit ARMv8 instruction set, or it could be either a stock or customized version of ARM's Cortex-A50 series cores); how many CPU cores it uses; and what GPU cores it uses (new support for OpenGL ES 3.0 suggests it uses Imagination Technologies "Rogue" Series6 GPU design).
