[ajross]

If you want to talk about architecture, please use the name of the CPU core and not Apple's marketing name for the integrated SoC IC. The "A5" is not a CPU. The application CPUs on the chip are ARM Cortex A9's. These are the same cores that are available on the OMAP4, Exynos, Tegra 2, and a few others I can't remember off the top of my head.

It is indeed a SMP core (1-4 CPUs), which does out of order execution and register renaming. And it outperforms the Cortex-A8 (an in-order CPU) on a per-clock basis on many workloads.

But it's not an Apple part. Everyone is shipping these things now.