iOS 5.1 Beta Reveals Apple Testing Quad-Core Mobile CPUs

Apple is planning to put a quad-core A6 chip inside its next generation iPhone or iPad and that is not a confirmation from Apple or any reliable source. What it does indicate is that Apple may be testing iOS support for quad-core CPUs. 9to5 Mac has dug up the images from iOS 5.1 beta, details the supported number of cores. In that a single-core A4 is referred to as /cores/core.0 while dual-core A5s are /cores/core.1. Now a new listing shows, /cores/core.3, is popping up, if you start counting it with zero, indicating the CPU is packing four cores. What they are trying to say is Apple may not be running test on hardware yet, but they may merely testing that the software support for quad-core chips is in the works.