Intel has released a trio of chips that it claims can beat the stuffing out of any mobile chips on the block, including Apple’s A4 processor, used first in the iPad and now in the iPhone 4. And Intel would be more than happy to save Apple the trouble of developing, say, an A5.

Unfortunately, we members of the great unwashed can’t directly compare the A4 with Intel’s new chips, developed under the platform codename of Moorestown. While Intel, whose chips power Apple’s Mac but not its iPhone/Pad/Pod, will tell you practically anything you’d like to know, Apple has released next to nothing about the A4.

But there’s really no reason for Jobs & Co. to talk. Intel needs to entice potential customers with Moorestown details, but since Apple is keeping the A4 all to itself, it can maintain its customary secrecy.

The iPad’s announcement--with characteristic Cupertinian disregard for both definite and indefinite articles--said that “iPad is powered by A4, Apple’s next-generation system-on-a-chip. Designed by Apple...” That phrase “Designed by Apple” is hooey-esque. The IP (intellectual property) behind the A4’s compute core is almost certainly that of an ARM Cortex A8; the graphics core is an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX; and the two layers of RAM that share the A4’s package are from Samsung, which manufactures the A4 for Apple.

Oh, and word on the street is that the A4 was designed by chiphouse Intrinsity, bought by Apple this March. Bonus points if you remember that Apple acquired another chipmaker, PA Semi, in spring 2008 (but return those points if you didn’t know that PA Semi’s top minds bailed after that acquisition).

Bottom line: We simply don’t know how much input Apple had into the A4’s design--meaning the integration of others’ IP and the addition of one heck of a lot of advanced power-management circuitry. But about Intel’s Moorestown, however, we know a lot. Well, we know what Intel’s marketing department has told us.

The Moorestown platform is made up of three chips. The Atom Z6xx processor, previously known as Lincroft, will be available in speeds up to 1.5GHz for smartphones and 1.9GHz for tablets, and includes Imagination’s PowerVR SGX 3D graphics and PowerVR VDX video, a display controller, and a memory controller.

The MP20 controller hub, née Langwell, provides platform-level power management, a hardware and software security architecture, low-power 24-bit audio, and USB. A mixed-signal integrated circuit (MSIC) formerly codenamed Briertown rounds out the trio, providing more power management, plus analog and digital circuitry.

At Moorestown’s rollout event this May, the head of Intel’s Ultra Mobility Group, Anand Chandrasekher, emphasized the platform’s high performance and low power requirements. When comparing it to current smartphone chippery--not named by Chandrasekher, but almost certainly ARM-based--he claimed one-and-a-half to three times better compute performance and two to four times “richer” graphics. Moorestown also supports 1080p high-profile HD video and 720p HD video capture. Chandrasekher claimed that in a standard smartphone form factor, a Moorestown device would have over 10 days of standby power, two days of audio playback, and four to five hours of web browsing or video viewing.

Claims, of course, are easy--we’ll see what Moorestown can do when it appears in devices later this year. Who those devices will be from, however, Chandrasekher wouldn’t say, noting that because discussions with prospective customers remain confidential, “it probably wouldn’t be in my best interests to piss them off.”

I don’t see Apple jumping ship to Intel’s mobile chips in the near future--although if Moorestown’s not seductive enough, its smaller and more power-miserly follow-up, Medfield, may be when it rolls around next year. But Chandrasekher’s comment was intriguing: If he had named names, can’t you imagine one secretive, black turtleneck–clad CEO getting mightily pissed off?

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Since the late 1980s, Rik Myslewski has paid his rent by keeping an eye on Apple. He was editor-in-chief of MacAddict from 2001 until its transformation into Mac|Life in early 2007, and is now a member of the snarkily sophisticated team at London’s The Register, which is “biting the hand that feeds IT” daily at www.theregister.co.uk.