Two chips to rule them all —

iPhone 5S sports new M7 processor to handle motion apps

M7 co-processor "continuously measures motion data" without waking up main chip.

iPhone 5S sports new M7 processor to handle motion apps
Andrew Cunningham

While announcing the iPhone 5S today, Apple said that the phone's A7 system-on-a-chip (SoC) will work alongside a new co-processor called the M7, which will enable "a new generation of health and fitness apps."

The chip "continuously measures motion data," and includes an accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass, Apple said. The chip measures and captures data from sensors without waking the A7 up, while a new API named "CoreMotion" identifies the user's movement and makes "optimizations based on contextual awareness."

Previous iPhones already had these types of sensors, but the new chip and API will presumably allow new kinds of use cases. Apple said a new Nike app called Nike+ Move "uses the M7 chip and GPS to keep track of activities you take part in throughout the day," our liveblogger Andrew Cunningham reports.

Channel Ars Technica