IDG News Service — Apple's (AAPL) internally developed A4 chip could be implemented in new devices such as low-power servers, TVs or even communications or entertainment boxes, if the company tries to expand the chip's footprint, analysts said.

It's difficult to predict Apple's future products, but variants of the A4 chip could reach media servers, entertainment gateways or network servers for cloud storage, analysts said. The low-power chip is designed for devices that do not require much horsepower, and can be tweaked to improve processing power, graphics or communication capabilities.

A remote, but unlikely, possibility is that the A4 also be included in future Macintosh computers as a co-processor alongside Intel's (INTC) processors for specific network, security or instant-on applications, analysts said. However, the hybrid computers may be more expensive, and software issues may dog systems.

The A4 chip was first unveiled in January when Apple announced the iPad. The chip now powers Apple's iPhone 4 and the Apple TV device, which was introduced this week. The system-on-chip includes an Arm processor that runs at 1GHz and a graphics core capable of rendering 720p high-definition video.

If Apple decides to expand A4 to more devices, likely candidates would be low-power servers, said Jack Gold, principal analyst of J. Gold Associates.

"I suppose A4 could make its way into light 'server' devices, such as media servers where you don't really need all of the power of an [Intel Core] i3 or i5 chip. And there are companies already looking at Arm-based servers, so I would think this might be a direction for Apple to pursue," Gold said.

Low-power chips based on Arm are used in most smartphones today, and are slowly reaching servers as alternatives to power-hungry x86 server processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Companies like Marvell and Smooth-stone have announced plans to build Arm CPUs into servers for cloud-computing environments.

Apple is essentially taking A4 in a similar direction that Intel is taking the low-power Atom processors, which are already being used in low-power servers, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research.

At a lower price than x86 chips, the A4 chip could be an attractive alternative to Atom.

"Arm's already being used in that class of products," McCarron said.

Media servers do not require much processing power and act more as network servers to store and serve multimedia, McCarron said. At the same time, the media server segment is already well-covered between the Apple TV device and the Mac Mini.

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