Apple's Lightning AV Adapter packs an ARM SoC, may use AirPlay-like decoding
 

The developers at Panic didn't start their days with the intention of ripping open a Lightning Digital AV Adapter, but that's exactly what happened once they suspected it held some secrets. At first, the group hooked the cable up to various iOS devices expecting 1080p mirroring, but were greeted with 1,600 x 900 as the highest possible resolution. A bit bewildered, they noticed MPEG artifacts, which led them to believe the dongle was acting as a small AirPlay-like receiver that supports streaming and decoding. Now entirely suspicious, the team tore the cable asunder and exposed an ARM SoC apparently packing 256MB of RAM. According to the devs, it's possible that the Lightning connector's small number of pins prevented Cupertino from delivering raw HDMI output, so they were forced to improvise with the added silicon. We've reached out to Apple to nail down just how the cable works.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/02/l...apter-arm-soc/