So what I want to do in this video is to
give you a sneak peak into the content of the course.
So many times what happens is when you operate on a nanoscale, it becomes
very hard to, you know, relate to the end product that you are making.
So what I want to do is start from an end product and try to give you a tear
down and talk to, you know, what the different components are and
how it will be, which lectures which we will be relating to
those component. So what I've shown here is it's shown here
a tear down of iPad 3 or the new iPad as Apple
called it. And if you take this thing apart or, you
know, there are many video and pictures available for the tear down
of these things.
So, if you, I highly recommend you looking at a few of those or if you
have an old iPhone or iPad lying around, you know, definitely try to take it apart.
All that's not that easy.
But so what I want to point to is, you know, the total bill of material
or, you know, the cost of total electronics and the total parts for an
iPad 3 is $310. And this is you know, for the base model.
And Apple sells it at a very healthy profit margin of about more than
80% so they sell it for and, you know, the base model, they sell it for $500.
So the first thing you notice if you open an iPad is the battery.
So the thing which occupies
most of the volume is this a lithium polymer-based
battery. And it costs around 30 bucks
or around 10% of your bill of the materials, comes from this battery.
we won't be talking about battery technology in this course.
If you want to learn more
about batteries I would recommend Material Science
303 which is a course taught by Professor
Yi Cui.
which is all about battery technology.
so the next thing you notice the next biggest thing by
volume and also the most expensive component is the display.
So the display on this iPad 3 which has the retina display is
it costs $87. The touchscreen, which goes
on top of the display costs another $40.
So in all, combined, around $127 is the
total cost coming from the display and the touchscreen.
So around 40% of your bill of
the materials is actually coming from the display.
And there is I mean there is speculation going
on in the next generation of these iOS devices.
They'll combine the touchscreen and the display into a single,
into a single into a single chip or a single package.
So we will be spending one entire lecture talking about display.
So Lecture number 7 would be all about displays.
what it takes to make displays readable in sunlight, why do
they consume most of the power in these devices, and so on.
So the next thing that
you notice is, most of the electronics on this
guy actually located on this small printed circuit board.
So, most of the electronics is on this double-sided
printed circuit board. So let's take a more closer look on this
PCB which houses most of the electronics. So it's really
tiny PCB, you know, not more than a few centimeters
wide and, you know, around 10 to 12 centimeters long.
And the first thing you notice if you open up
an iPad is that you don't see the chips directly.
You see these steel plates which essentially act
as EMI shields or, you know, they shield the
electromagnetic radiation. So, why do we need these shields?
So, you know, there are a lot of there's a WiFi chip located here.
And there are chips which enable 3G and, you
know, the 4G network on your iPad, which are located on this separate PCB.
So there's a lot of electromagnetic radiation
coming in the vicinity of this PCB.
So to protect that you have these EMI shields in the form of these steel plates.
And they essentially shield the rest
of the chips from this electromagnetic radiation.
But you can easily take these EMI shields apart
and then what you see is, you see all
the chips and all the electronics in all its glory.
So, you know, shown here is the A5X microprocessor which powers the iPad 3.
And shown here is the flash memory which stores more stuff here, your
music, your apps and other stuff. So let's, let's, look at this
PCB in even more detail. So what I am showing here is
essentially both sides of this PCB, so it is a double-sided
PCB so what is shown here as this is one side
and this is the other side flipped over. So these are the two sides of your PCB.
you see there's a separate you know, the two PCBs switch together.
Most of your 3G and
4G chips primarily these chips from
Qualcomm which enable this 4G functionality.
Those are located on a, on a separate PCB
and only the premium model of iPad include these chips.
So if you're buying a base version, you don't get these chips and you don't get
this this this small PCB. So let me point out the main component.
So this is the A5X microprocessor.
It cost 26 dollars or
around 8% of the bill of the materials, of
$310. this is the, this is the
flash memory chip. And the
16GB flash memory chip will cost you
around $16 or uh,$1
per gigabyte. This is the DRAM
memory and iPad
comes with a 1GB DRAM memory which
costs $7.60.
So I want to make a few quick points looking at the, these price numbers.
So the first point I want to make is, you know, if you look at the price of your
microprocessors, it's roughly 8% of the bill of the materials.
So there's a lot of chatter nowadays which, you know, people lot of critics
of the Moore's Law, they say, you know, Moore's Law is dead.
And a lot that you know, it originates from this price of the microprocessors.
So in traditional Intel-based microprocessors, you know, the i3 to
i7 lines of microprocessors that you find in your laptops.
They cost, you know, the ASPs of those the average selling point of those is anywhere
between you know, 100 to $150. Or if you
buy laptop around 30% of your
bill of the material of your laptop comes from the price of your microprocessor.
And as compared to, you know, in these mobile
devices, it's less than 10% of your bill of materials.
another, another point I want to make so, you know, a microprocessor
certainly is, is what you're seeing is it's, it's getting commoditized.
Its, its percentage of the bill of the material is reducing.
Another, another quick point I want to make is the flash memory.
So the 16GB flash memory. It costs $16 or $1 per gigabyte.
If you buy flash from Apple though, like if you upgrade from a
16GB to a 32Gb model, they will
charge you a $100 for this extra memory. So they
will charge you $100 for this 16 gigabit of gigabyte
of memory or approximately $6 per per gigabyte.
So if you see the price of flash memory is only $1 per gigabyte.
So it's, it's, it's, there's a running joke, you
know, that it's much, much more expensive to buy
flash from Apple as compared to, you know, if
you buy it from a flash memory vendor, say SanDisk.