Apple A15

The Apple A15 Bionic is a 64-bit ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc. It is used in the iPhone 13 and 13 Mini, iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max, and the 2021 iPad Mini.[4] Apple made no claims of increased performance from its predecessor SoC.

Apple A15 Bionic
General information
LaunchedSeptember 14, 2021
Designed byApple Inc.
Common manufacturer(s)
Product codeAPL1W07[1]
Max. CPU clock rateto 2.93 GHz in iPad Mini 6[2]

3.23 GHz in iPhone 13 Pro[3] 

Architecture and classification
ApplicationMobile
Technology node5 nm
Microarchitecture"Avalanche" and "Blizzard"
Instruction setA64
Physical specifications
Transistors
  • 15 billion
Cores
  • 6
GPU(s)Apple-designed 4 core GPU in iPhone 13 / 13 Mini
Apple-designed 5 core GPU in iPhone 13 Pro / 13 Pro Max and iPad Mini 6
History
PredecessorApple A14

Design

The Apple A15 Bionic features an Apple-designed 64-bit six-core CPU implementing ARMv8 with two high-performance cores called Avalanche and four energy-efficient cores called Blizzard. Apple claims the A15 in the iPhones is 50% faster than the competition. Apple claims the A15 in the iPad Mini 6 is 40% faster than the A12.[5]

The A15 contains 15 billion transistors and includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a new 16-core Neural Engine.[6] The Neural Engine can perform 15.8 trillion operations per second, faster than A14's 11 trillion operations per second (+ 43%).[6] The A15 also includes a new image processor (ISP) with improved computational photography capabilities.[7] Apple also boosted performance by doubling the system cache to 32MB.[8]

The A15 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.[9] Codecs VP8 and VP9 are also unofficially supported. The AV1 codec is not supported via hardware acceleration.[10]

A15 is manufactured by TSMC, reportedly on their second-generation 5 nm fabrication process, N5P.[11][12]

GPU

The A15 integrates an Apple-designed five-core GPU for the iPad mini 6, iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max models, while one GPU core is disabled in the iPhone 13 and 13 Mini, resulting in a four-core GPU for these models.[13] Apple claims the A15's five-core GPU is 50% faster than the competition. Apple claims the A15's four-core GPU is 30% faster than the competition.[5]

Products that include the Apple A15 Bionic

See also

References
  1. What's inside the Apple iPhone 13 Pro Teardown?
  2. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Underclocked-The-A15-chip-inside-Apple-s-new-iPad-mini-6-is-slower-than-in-the-iPhone-13.562249.0.html
  3. https://sparrowsnews.com/2021/09/16/iphone-13-pro-geekbench-score/
  4. "Apple A15 Bionic Powers iPhone 13 and iPad Mini". Tom's Hardware. September 14, 2021.
  5. Frumusanu, Andrei (September 14, 2021). "Apple Announces iPhone 13 Series: A15, New Cameras, New Screens". AnandTech. Retrieved September 15, 2021.
  6. Shankland, Stephen (September 14, 2021). "Apple's A15 Bionic chip powers iPhone 13 with 15 billion transistors, new graphics and AI". CNET. Retrieved September 15, 2021.
  7. "Apple unveils iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max — more pro than ever before". Apple Newsroom.
  8. "Apple unveils new a15 bionic soc". ExtremeTech.
  9. "iPhone 13 - Technical Specifications". support.apple.com. Retrieved 2021-10-24.
  10. https://www.cpu-monkey.com/de/compare_cpu-apple_a15_bionic-2130-vs-apple_a10_fusion-1656
  11. Hruska, Joel (September 15, 2021). "Apple Unveils New A15 Bionic SoC". ExtremeTech. Retrieved September 15, 2021.
  12. Sohail, Omar (March 30, 2021). "Apple's A15 Bionic to Use TSMC's 'N5P' Process for the Upcoming iPhone 13 Series; Mass Production Could Start in May". Wccftech. Retrieved September 15, 2021.
  13. Espósito, Filipe (2021-09-15). "iPhone 13 Pro's A15 Bionic chip has more powerful GPU than regular iPhone 13". 9to5Mac. Retrieved 2021-09-15.
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