Apple iPod (3rd Generation) Teardown

Introduction and Lossy Compression background info

Digital audio was made commercially available when CDs emerged on the market, a popular medium storing usually stereo audio in a digital 16-bit format, CDs conventionally hold 80 minutes of audio, so le size is directly linked to length of the audio; roughly 10Mb per minute for 16-bit 44.1Khz stereo PCM. With newer MP3 players, it is not as simple as length and size because different types of lossy compression are used, the most popular being the MP3 format, which can provide an unnoticeable difference from uncompressed sound at a fraction of the original le size (an MP3 encoded at 128kb/s will have a le size roughly 1/11th of the original digital audio), many different compression techniques are used to achieve this; different psychoacoustic masking models are used to lter out frequencies in the audio le that are inaudible to human hearing, due to them being above or below the audible frequency range or that the particular frequency band is masked during the song by another frequency;discarding the excess data in the process. More modern codecs also supported by the iPod are; The AAC codec, which is a derivative of MPEG-4, similar to MP3 but tests show that AAC can provide an equal or better quality Sound le to MP3 whilst retaining or having less le size; optimised algorithms are used that are built from the MP3 system. The iPod also supports AIFF and WAV formats - both of which are lossless types - These le types are purely containers for the pure digital audio streams, so if it was ripped directly from an audio CD, all the original frequencies would be present, at a cost of le size (about 32MB for 3 minutes of audio in 16/44.1k format). Another lossless audio format supported by the ipod is the Apple Lossless audio codec (ALAC), which is like AIFF and WAV, but has a smaller le size than the latter two; It stores the data in an MP4 container (usually .m4a); it can compress the le size but retain the original data by using a linear prediction algorithm used by other lossless codecs such as FLAC and Shorten.

Dismantling Procedure
1. Prise off the metal casing.

2. Remove ribbon connection from the main board to the hold switch / headphones socket.

3. Lift hard drive carefully so the ribbon beneath is disconnected.

4. Unplug the power cable from the battery to the ipod and remove battery.

5. Unscrew the 6 screws around the main PCB

7. Carefully lift the ribbon connector from the PCB to the board underneath

8. Lift out the PCB to reveal the scroll wheel and LCD electronics.

9. remove LCD ribbon and lift out the LCD screen component.

Hard Drive LCD Dock Connector

Firewire/ USB Interface Buttons

LCD Addressing Memory

DAC Portalplayer PP5002 Wolfson Codec

Headphones/ Line-In

ADC

Other components
Here, you can see the Li-Ion battery is connected to the PCB with three wires; the red being positive, the black negative and the white is actually a 10K negative-tempcoefcient thermistor, which is used to measure the temperature of the battery when it is being charged. This particular battery is different to the one that originally came with the iPod (680mAH), I replaced the old one with this which has a higher mAH rating. The battery charger is supplied by Linear Technology and the Power management chip is provided by Phillips

The Headphones / Hold switch section at the top of the ipod is connected to the main PCB through a ribbon connector similar to the battery connector. The headphone connector will have multiple connections to the main board; one each for left and right audio channels, which would go directly to one of the DACs in the iPod and also another connection for ground, this is needed to detect whether any headphones are connected or not so the ipod knows when to auto-pause a track when headphones are accidentally removed etc. There will be another connection for audio recording because the headphones sockets also works as a line-in port for third party memo-recording devices, this would require an ADC and a compressor of some type before the encoded, recorded audio is stored on the Hard Drive. The Hold switch cuts off use of the touch-sensitive buttons on the face of the iPod so that accidental operation does not occur when the iPod is being carried in a pocket (when the hold switch is in the orange position). This may be a simple case of the hold switch turning off power to transistors used in the capacitive touch screen so no differences in potential can be identied by the touch-button system.

Toshiba 1.8 40GB HDD

Key Features

40GB of data storage for audio les compact 1.8 form SATA Connection to PCB The Hard Drive is the main expenditure in the manufacturing of the iPod, it is worth more on its own than the rest of the iPod components together. Apples idea when they made the ipod was that it should be able to hold all of the songs a customer owns and be able to carry it round with him/her. The iPod uses algorithms to access the HDD only when it is necessary due to the fact it is not a solid state component like the rest of the ipod parts, this translates to high energy consumption. Apple have taken it in their interest to invest in a large (for the time) memory module to temporarily store data from the hard drive. Apple made the wise decision to create software not only for their own operating system (OS X), but create a version of iTunes for Microsoft Windows as well; the majority of computer owners had Windows at the time and it would certainly increase sales. This posed a slight problem to Apple because the OS X OS is not compatible of reading the NTFS le system used by windows, so the system software in the iPod was changed to read both NTFS and HFS+ le systems - if you were a mac user, your ipod would not work with windows and vice versa due to the biased le system. Apple made it possible to use the iPod hard drive not only for iTunes music storage, but accessible as a removable storage media on Macs and PCs, a consumer could store their photos and videos etc on the iPod to take to another workstation, but the les would not be accessible on the iPod itself, just as a storage medium.

Dock Connector - Apple The Dock connector is a digital I/O port that is capable of connecting to Macs, PCs and compatible speaker-system docks. It complies to both USB2.0 and IEEE 1394 interfaces. The iPod utilises this port for Battery Charging, USB2.0 data exchange, IEEE 1394 (rewire 400) Data Exchange, Digital audio out. This iPod requires a Firewire connection to either a mains socket or a computer for the battery to charge, but either USB or Firewire can be used to access the HDD for synching etc. when attached to a iPod compatible stereo system, the dock connector sends a digital binary audio signal to the sound system so the ipods DAC is not used in playing the music, but audio codecs are used in the ipod to convert from MP3, etc. Monochrome LCD Display The display on the iPod makes it quite a bit different to most MP3 players on the market, the size and resolution are much greater than the average. the LCD has its own whole module in the iPod, a ribbon connector and an addressing system on a chip that controls the LCD itself. the addressor decodes data from the PortalPlayer into X and Y form and applies voltage to the appropriate pixels on the screen; this relatively old iPod model has a monochrome screen, so no RGB data is handled by the addressing system. The screen is the main interfacing tool used by the user, without it the user would not be able to see the various menus and settings etc that are provided by the operating system.

ICs and Block Diagrams

PortalPlayer PP5002 Main Features Dual ARM Processors @ 90MHz Real-Time Encoding and decoding of popular audio formats Support for Graphic EQ Power Management (Low-Power mode) Integrated USB 1.1 Device controller Built to Interface with Wolfson WM8731 Audio Codec/Amp/ DAC The main Integrated Circuit is the PortalPlayer PP5002, which controls the User Interface (UI), The peripherals and performs the audio decoding. Portalplayer are a company who specialise in manufacturing low-power chips for portable music players. The PP5002 has many different functions, so it could be described as a System on chip (SoC). From the data sheet i found this chip contains dual ARM7 processors (7TDMI), that have maximum clock speeds of 90MHz. all functions carried out in the ipod are registered through this SoC. Many modern portable devices today have chips designed by ARM, such as mobile phones, Satellite Navigation systems and PDAs .

http://members.chello.nl/~m.heijligers/ipod/Engineering/engineering.html From this block diagram of the SoC, you can see that it does the majority of calculations required by the iPod. Lets say we selected a song to be played on the iPod; This chip would transfer the audio data from the Toshiba hard drive to be temporarily stored on the Hynix memory module, once complete, the HDD could be switched off to conserve power. the MP3 would then undergo the decoding algorithm, the codec softwares used are stored in small read-only ash memory on the PP5002D chip, it can read MP3, MP3 VBR,

AAC, AIFF and WAV formats; the output raw digital audio signal would be Processed by the sister chip; Wolfson WM8731, which has a Analogue to digital converter (ADC) and also acts as a headphone amplier - Here is a block diagram of the codec from Wolfson.

This codec system is able to encode MP3 and Audible audio formats from a line-in input in real time; and it can also decode AIFF, MP3, MP3 VBR, WAV, ALAC, Audible and AAC formats. Many reviews of the 3rd generation iPod claim that the bass response of this model is particularly weak due to the Wolfson codec and is mainly a hardware fault. The Bass response on the headphones output is seriously awed due to too small output capacitances in the 3rd generation iPod. A Stereoplay.de measurement of the 3rd generation ipod conrms the lack of bass www.stereoplay.de, 2003.

Hynix HY5V56D Key Features Small 13.5mm x 8.0mm Package. All inputs and outputs referenced to system clock. 32MB Random Access Memory SDRAM

The memory module is provided by Hynix, a large semiconductor company based in Icheon, South Korea. It has a 256 Megabit memory, when divided by 8 equals 32Mb of memory, which gives more than enough space for anti-skip insurance; audio les are loaded from the hard drive via the TI interface to the memory module, prior to being decoded as they are selected to be played so it works as a buffer, this has two advantages; it stops the harddrive from being constantly used to prevent physical wear and intense battery usage and it prevents any skipping in the song due to the hard drive being over-accelerated during use e.g. if someone is running/training etc. The compressed sound data is then processed by the Wolfson codec into pure digital form with help from the dual ARM processors, it is also amplied and converted to an analogue voltage that can be translated to sound through headphones or speakers. The IC comes in a 54-ball FBGA package soldered to the board, it has an operating voltage of 3.30.3V Texas Instruments TSB43AA82
Key Features

Single 3.3V supply Internal 1.8V circuit - reduces Power consumption IEEE 1394 (Firewire 400) Functions Supports ATAPI and SCSI modes 40MHz Clock Speed 144 Pins 8-/16-Bit Asynchronous and Synchronous DMA Interface

This chip by Texas Instruments provides the interface between the PortalPlayer, the HDD and also provides the FireWire drivers, through which the iPod charges and exchanges data with the Mac/PC. This is a main feature of this iPod that other MP3 players of the time did not have; rewire connectivity was an exclusivity of Apple and boasted faster data transfer than USB 1.1 and 2.0. In reality, the data transfer rate is limited not by the data capacity of the cable itself, but the speed of the Hard Drive (in the case of this iPod, 5400RPM) in both the iPod and the host (either PC or Mac) and also this particular chip that handles the interfacing of external entities. The iPod also has its battery

charged through this interface, Firewire 400 has a relatively high current that can be induced by the battery, although this chip doesnt handle power management. Texas Instruments 41A6CRK Key Features Low-Voltage 24-Bit FET Bus signal Switch This chip provides 24 Bits of High-Speed bus switching, the switch has a low on-state resistance so connections can be made with minimal propagation delay.

Sharp F800BGHB-BTLZEJAPAN Key Features 8MB Flash Memory This chip was difcult to nd information for; but Im guessing that it is used for loading the graphical user interface when the iPod is booted up, so that the operating system is easily accessible in volatile memory.

Cypress CY7C68013 EZ-USB FX2

Key Features

The worlds First USB2.0 integrated microcontroller 8051-Type 56Mbytes per second data rate 128-Pin Allows 8- and 16-Bit connection to parallel interfaces. up to 48MHz clock speed Three Counters/Timers 3.3V operation 8kb RAM This chip handles the interfacing between the iPod and the PC/Mac, it uses DMA (direct memory access) to transfer http://volodya-project.sourceforge.net/SR/SR-1/sr1.php data internally; it can be used only for

data transfer - newer iPod models can take advantage of the external current from a PC to charge the battery, this can only be achieved when using a rewire connection on this particular model. This chip converts the SATA interface of the hard drive to one that can be read by the USB port of the PC/Mac, USB uses less bandwidth than the SATA interface and cables are usually smaller in USB, SATA cables are sometimes large and at ribbons, SATA uses more power/current to transfer data at higher speeds. Phillips PCF50605HN
Key Features

This chip manages the power throughout the ipod, There is not much information on this chip, but i believe it is used to supply different levels of DC voltage to different components in the iPod as it is required. this could be achieved by a network of resistors and logic gates and latches etc, it prevents the components from overheating or having the wrong voltage sent to them. This chip could also give all the components a common ground reference.

Components Costs
Component / Process Hard Drive - Toshiba JPN Memory Module - Hynix KOR Inputs / Outputs - Various LCD Module - Unknown Audio processor - Wolfson PortalPlayer CPU Rough Cost $140.00 $30.00 $25.00 $15.00 $6.00 $5.00 61% 13% 11% 7% 3% 2% 1% 1% 1% Percentage

Assembly and Test - Labour $3.00 Battery Pack Display Driver VAT 17.5% Shipping & Insurance Import Tax Components/Assembly Total: Total expenditure RRP: Rough Prot: $3.00 $2.00 $40 $8 $40 $229.00 $317 $499.00 $182

100%

Product Design and Conclusion

Apple is renowned for their stylish and modern designs in consumer electronics and the iPod (third generation) is no exception, the design and human interfacing of the device has been greatly improved over previous models of the iPod, The rst generations had a mechanical touch wheel, whereas this model uses a calibrated capacitive touch screen and an array of buttons that use the same technology for human interfacing. Apples trademark minimalist white design has been used so that it is uniform with the rest of their trademark, many consumers see this as a fashion icon and buy iPods purely for the brand name. Many customers will see a new iPod model as a must have gadget, iPods always take advantage of the current highest technologies that are available to consumer level, the newly designed touch buttons and red backlight are a different take on the iPod design, but stylishly in-keeping with the Apple air. Apple must have had many different teams working on the iPod model, for different parts of the device, at one point they would have merged together to discuss howe they could t all the various components into a small, reliable, ergonomic design. I believe the iPod is an excellent MP3 player with accurate sound and a stylish exterior and is still the top of the market today.

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