The Apple A12 Bionic is a 64-bit ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc.[8] It first appeared in the iPhone XS and XS Max, iPhone XR, iPad Air (3rd generation), iPad Mini (5th generation), 8th generation iPad and Apple TV 4K (2nd generation).[8][5] Apple states that the two high-performance cores are 15% faster and 50% more energy-efficient than the Apple A11's, and the four high-efficiency cores use 50% less power than the A11's.[8][7] It is the first mass-market system on a chip to be built using the 7 nm process.[9]
 | |
| General information | |
|---|---|
| Launched | September 12, 2018 |
| Discontinued | October 18, 2022 |
| Designed by | Apple Inc. |
| Common manufacturer(s) | |
| Product code | APL1W81[2] |
| Max. CPU clock rate | to 2.49[3] GHz |
| Cache | |
| L1 cache | 128 KB instruction, 128 KB data |
| L2 cache | 8 MB |
| Architecture and classification | |
| Application | Mobile |
| Technology node | 7 nm[4][5] (N7)[6] |
| Microarchitecture | "Vortex" and "Tempest" |
| Instruction set | A64 – ARMv8.3-A |
| Physical specifications | |
| Transistors |
|
| Cores |
|
| GPU(s) | Apple-designed 4 core "Apple G11P"[4][7] |
| Products, models, variants | |
| Variant(s) |
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| History | |
| Predecessor(s) | Apple A11 |
| Successor(s) | Apple A13 |
Design
The Apple A12 SoC features an Apple-designed 64-bit ARMv8.3-A six-core CPU, with two high-performance cores called Vortex, running at 2.49 GHz, and four energy-efficient cores called Tempest.[4][5] The Vortex cores are a 7-wide decode out-of-order superscalar design, while the Tempest cores are a 3-wide decode out-of-order superscalar design. Like the A11's Mistral cores, the Tempest cores are based on Apple's Swift cores from the Apple A6.[10]
The A12 also integrates an Apple-designed four-core graphics processing unit (GPU) with 50% faster graphics performance than the A11.[4][8] The A12 includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a "Next-generation Neural Engine."[11] This neural network hardware has eight cores[7] and can perform up to 5 trillion 8-bit operations per second.[4][5] Unlike the A11's Neural Engine, third-party apps can access the A12's Neural Engine.[12]
The A12 is manufactured by TSMC[1] using a 7 nm[5] FinFET process, the first to ship in a consumer product,[4][1] containing 6.9 billion transistors.[1] The die size of the A12 is 83.27 mm2, 5% smaller than the A11.[13] It is manufactured in a package on package (PoP) together with 4 GiB of LPDDR4X memory in the iPhone XS[2] and XS Max[13] and 3 GB of LPDDR4X memory in the iPhone XR, the iPad Air (2019), the 5th generation iPad mini, and the iPad (2020).[14] The ARMv8.3 instruction set it supports brings a significant security improvement in the form of pointer authentication, which mitigates exploitation techniques such as those involving memory corruption, Jump-Oriented-Programming, and Return-Oriented-Programming.[15]
The A12 has video codec encoding support for HEVC and H.264. It has decoding support for HEVC, H.264, MPEG‑4 Part 2, and Motion JPEG.[16]
| SoC | A12 (7 nm) | A11 (10 nm) |
|---|---|---|
| Total Die | 83.27 | 87.66 |
| Big Core | 2.07 | 2.68 |
| Small Core | 0.43 | 0.53 |
| CPU Complex (incl. cores) | 11.90 | 14.48 |
| GPU Core | 3.23 | 4.43 |
| GPU Total | 14.88 | 15.28 |
| NPU | 5.79 | 1.83 |
Products that include the Apple A12 Bionic
See also
- Apple silicon, the range of ARM-based processors designed by Apple
- Apple A12X
- Comparison of Armv8-A processors