Apple A7

Apple A7 chip in the iPhone 5s

Apple A7 chip in the iPad Air

The Apple A7 is one of the US company Apple Inc. developed and from the South Korean company Samsung Electronics manufactured system on a chip (SoC). It combines a 64-bit - ARM - CPU with a graphics processor and main memory and also takes over the functions of a conventional PC chipset . It belongs to the S5L SoCs .

The predecessor of the A7 was the Apple A6 , the successor to the Apple A8 .

history

The A7 is the first SoC ever to be based on a 64-bit ARM architecture. It was presented on September 10, 2013 as part of the iPhone 5s and is supported in this device by the Apple M7 sensor coprocessor . The manufacturer also installs the A7 chip in its iPad Air devices as well as in the iPad mini 2 and iPad mini 3 .

According to the semiconductor manufacturer TSMC , the introduction of the A7 has led to an accelerated changeover to 64-bit ARM processors and, as a result, a rapid change to smaller structure widths of 28 and 20 nanometers.

According to a first-instance US judgment, the A7 chip should contain technology that is protected by a patent from the University of Wisconsin . Therefore, the US court first sentenced Apple to pay $ 506 million in damages for patent infringement. The judgment was overturned by the appellate court and the US Supreme Court upheld the overturning.

technology

The A7 SoC used in the iPhone 5s and the two iPad mini have the chip names S5L8960X . They each contain two RISC processor cores clocked at 1.3  GHz , which support the 64-bit ARMv8 instruction set and are downwardly compatible with the 32-bit ARMv7 and ARMv6 instruction set. The micro- architecture called Cyclone is an in-house development by Apple. In both devices, the A7 addresses 1024 MB SDRAM memory ( LPDDR3 ), which is clocked at 1333 MHz, via a 64-bit address bus . In addition to the RAM and the processor, the A7 also has an Imagination PowerVR G6430 GPU cluster with 4 cores that can encode and decode videos in HD resolution and supports OpenGL ES 3.0. In addition, a memory controller are SATA -Peripherie and NAND - flash memory and a private audio subsystem integrated. The A7 is manufactured by Samsung Electronics using the 28 nm high-K / metal gate process.

The variant used in the iPad Air (chip designation S5L8965X ) works in a metallic housing with a clock rate of 1.4 GHz and does not have its own RAM .

Microarchitecture

Block diagram of Apple's 64-bit Cyclone micro-architecture

The processor cores of the Apple A7 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 Cyclone. Since Apple hardly publishes any technical information about Cyclone itself, there is only limited reliable information about the microarchitecture.

Electronics editor Frank Riemenschneider tried to draw conclusions about the micro-architecture of Cyclone using information published by Apple, an iPhone 5S and apps he developed himself . The block diagram presented by Cyclone is the only one of its kind published to date.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Inside the iPhone 5s ( Memento of the original from August 3, 2014 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 on September 20, 2013 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Anand Lal Shimpi: Apple Announces A7, World's First 64-Bit Smartphone SoC , published on September 10, 2013. Retrieved on February 24, 2015
3. ↑ TSMC: Apple A7 ensures faster updating of ARM processors , MacTechNews on April 18, 2014
4. ↑ Patent dispute: Apple sentenced to US university to pay damages. $ 234 million for stolen patents: Apple has to pay fine to the University of Wisconsin. The affected technology can also be found in various iPhone versions. In: ZEIT ONLINE. ZEIT ONLINE GmbH, October 18, 2015, accessed on October 18, 2015 . 
5. ↑ Apple is supposed to pay half a billion dollars in patent litigation , APA report on derstandard.at of July 26, 2017, accessed on July 31, 2017.
6. ↑ https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-apple/us-supreme-court-snubs-university-of-wisconsin-appeal-in-patent-fight-with-apple-idUSKBN1WM1F8
7. ↑ Frank Riemenschneider : The new iPhone5S processor comes with two cyclone cores. Report at Elektroniknet.de from September 18, 2013.
8. ↑ Anand Lal Shimpi: The iPhone 5s Review: GPU Architecture . September 17, 2013. Retrieved September 18, 2013.
9. ↑ Frank Riemenschneider: These are the chips in the new iPhone5S. Report to Elektroniknet.de from September 20, 2013.
10. ↑ Anand Lal Shimpi: The iPad Air Review. In: anandtech.com. October 30, 2013, accessed October 30, 2013 . 
11. ↑ Frank Riemenschneider : Nvidia introduces the Tegra 4 mobile processor http://www.elektroniknet.de/kommunikation/mobilfunk/artikel/93965/
12. ↑ Frank Riemenschneider : Apple's “Cyclone” CPU architecture revealed. Report to Elektroniknet.de from March 31, 2014.

Web links

• The iPhone 5s Review: A7 SoC Explained (AnandTech on September 17, 2013)
• Apple A7 Teardown (iFixit on September 25, 2013)