The new hand-held iDevice platform will sport an enhanced “secondary” graphics coprocessor and additional media performance accelerator for all but the entry-level models, providing intense gaming performance and the ability for iApps to do things that we previously only expected the most powerful full-featured computers to be able to pull off….and it will do them with stunning levels of performance in many areas. Notably, physics and the encoding of almost any form of media.

The storage module of the high-end models will include several chips in addition to the primary Flash storage device that may end up as part of the standardized core SoC chip.

That storage will contain the operating system and bundled applications, no more than one gigabyte in size and possibly significantly less. This will be a marked change from the existing device where all storage is on a single Flash volume of 8 or 16 gigabytes — partitioned but physically existing on a single Flash device.

The new storage module, separate of the SoC, will contain at least two additional physical storage chips; one faster and small, the other still fast but much larger. The fast volume will contain third party applications and all userland data, cache or the like generated during use of the device. The larger primary storage volume will contain media files and anything that the user may want to “sync” from iTunes or by using the new Disk Mode feature (re-)enabled by this multi-chip design.

Currently, the sync performance even after the 2.1 Update’s considerable improvements in that area of the iPhone 3G/iPod Touch leaves much to be desired….and while conducting a sync nothing else can be done with the device. This new design will both improve performance, enable the long-absent ability to mount the primary storage volume as an ordinary everyday disk on the OS X desktop, and allow users to sync their iDevice without having to surrender its entire functionality until the sync is complete.

Some data & functionality will still have to be suspended during a sync, but this will be far less of an inconvenience than in today’s devices.

All this is good stuff, and some of it we have talked about before.

This, however, is entirely new: we can also now confirm that at least the new high-end iDevices will support 802.11n Wi-Fi with its far greater (54 vs 300Mbps, degrading much slower at the extreme end of range) performance and (2-5X+) range over the 802.11g used in existing hand-held iDevices…..and this new more powerful wi-fi support, in concert with the new multi-chip storage system, will enable iPhones & iPods to sync wirelessly….not just sync wirelessly, but do so with performance that in some cases can actually be *faster* than syncing with a USB2 cable(!!).

Fancy that.

This is gonna be good. Damn good.

We’ve been saying for a while now that 2009 is going to be one heck of a ride, one that blows away even the remarkable years that Apple has had in 2007 and 2008. Now you can see some of what will make it just such a barn-burner…..join us for even more unbelievably red-hot dirt as we continue to shovel it as fast as we can type!