Apple A6

A6 SoC on an iPhone 5 logic board

Apple A6 chip

Apple A6X chip

The Apple A6 and Apple A6X are from Apple developed and Samsung made system-on-a-chip (SoC). They combine a 32-bit ARM - CPU with a PowerVR - GPU and also take over the functions of a conventional PC chipset . Often the designation Apple A6 or A6X is used alone for the ARM processor, but this is not exactly correct. The A6 is one of the S5L SoCs .

The A6 was introduced on September 12, 2012 as part of the iPhone 5 . The A6X was introduced on October 23, 2012 as part of the iPad 4 .

The predecessor of the A6 is the Apple A5 , the successor to the Apple A7 .

technology

A6

The Apple A6 ( S5L8950 ) has the dimensions of approx. 14 mm × 16 mm and a resulting area of ​​approx. 224 mm². It is manufactured using the 32 nm process and has two ARM v7s processor cores that work with a maximum clock frequency of 1.3  GHz . In ARM -v7s is an extended Apple ARM -v7 instruction set. As GPU one is PowerVR SGX 543MP3 with three clocked at 266 MHz processor cores from Imagination Technologies used. The first synthetic benchmarks show a maximum increase in performance of 250% compared to the A5 processor in the iPhone 4s , Apple itself advertises doubled computing and graphics performance.

A6X

The Apple A6X ( S5L8955 ) has two ARMv7s processor cores with a clock frequency of 1.4 GHz, which is slightly higher than that of the A6. A PowerVR SGX 554MP4 is used as the graphics processor , which - like its predecessor A5X - consists of four processor cores that are clocked higher than in the A6 or A5X. According to Apple, the A6X should deliver twice as much CPU and graphics performance as its predecessor, the A5X. The A6X is also manufactured using the 32 nm process, and the die has a size of about 124 mm ² .

Microarchitecture

Block diagram of Apple's Swift microarchitecture, as presented on July 9, 2013 at the ARM Systems Development Conference.

The processor cores of the Apple A6 / A6X were not licensed by Apple directly from ARM , but by means of a so-called ARM architecture license, which u. a. and the chip maker Qualcomm for its Snapdragon - SoCs uses, even developed under the name Swift. Since Apple does not publish any technical information about Swift itself, there is no reliable information about the microarchitecture .

Electronics editor Frank Riemenschneider attempted to draw conclusions about Swift's microarchitecture using an iPhone 5 and apps he developed himself and presented the results on July 9, 2013 at an ARM developer conference in Munich organized by ARM and WEKA Fachmedien GmbH . The block diagram presented by Swift at the conference is the only one of its kind published so far. During his lecture, however, Riemenschneider had to admit that it would be impossible without Apple's cooperation to provide details such as B. determine the size of buffers for dynamic branch prediction.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Apple A6 Teardown (English). iFixit, accessed September 29, 2012 . 
2. ↑ Apple's A6 CPU actually clocked at around 1.3GHz, per new Geekbench report (English). Engadget, accessed September 29, 2012 . 
3. ↑ Frank Riemenschneider : A6 chip is based on Apple's own processor microarchitecture http://www.elektroniknet.de/halbleiter/processoren/artikel/91512
4. ↑ Apple's A6 SoC in the iPhone 5 integrates a triple-core GPU . Tomshardware.de of September 27, 2012, accessed on July 5, 2013.
5. ↑ Fastest iPhone: iPhone 5 - the first benchmarks. PC Welt, accessed September 29, 2012 . 
6. ↑ Apple - iPhone 5 - Features. Apple , accessed March 13, 2013 . 
7. ↑ iphone-magazine.de - ( Memento of the original from November 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ Chris Foresman: Deducing details about Apple's A6X processor. Report on Arstechnica.com from October 24, 2012.
9. ↑ Matthias Wellendorf, Pierre Dandumont: iPad 4 works with two 1.4 GHz cores Report at tomshardware.de from October 30, 2012.
10. ↑ Apple - iPad - Features. Apple , accessed October 23, 2012 . 
11. ↑ Inside the Apple iPad 4 - A6X a very new beast! ( Memento of the original from May 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Chipworks.com on November 1, 2012, accessed July 5, 2013. 
12. ↑ Frank Riemenschneider : Nvidia introduces the Tegra 4 mobile processor http://www.elektroniknet.de/kommunikation/mobilfunk/artikel/93965/
13. ↑ Conference for ARM system development http://www.arm-entwicklerkonferenz.de/home.html