Engineering:Apple A12

Short description: System on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc.

Apple A12 Bionic

General Info
Launched	September 12, 2018 (2018-09-12)
Designed by	Apple Inc.
Common manufacturer(s)	TSMC
Product code	APL1W81
Max. CPU clock rate	to 2.49 GHz
Cache
L1 cache	128 KB instruction, 128 KB data
L2 cache	8 MB
Architecture and classification
Application	Mobile
Min. feature size	7 nm
Microarchitecture	"Vortex" and "Tempest"
Instruction set	Aarch64; ARMv8.3-A
Physical specifications
Transistors	6.9 billion
Cores	6 (ARM Big.LITTLE: 2× big Vortex + 4× little Tempest)
GPU(s)	Apple-designed 4 core "Apple G11P"
Products, models, variants
Variant(s)	Apple A12X/A12Z
History
Predecessor	Apple A11
Successor	Apple A13

The Apple A12 Bionic is a 64-bit ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc. 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). 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. It is the first mass-market system on a chip to be built using the 7 nm process.

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. 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.

The A12 also integrates an Apple-designed four-core graphics processing unit (GPU) with 50% faster graphics performance than the A11. The A12 includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a "Next-generation Neural Engine." This neural network hardware has eight cores and can perform up to 5 trillion 8-bit operations per second. Unlike the A11's Neural Engine, third-party apps can access the A12's Neural Engine.

The A12 is manufactured by TSMC using a 7 nm FinFET process, the first to ship in a consumer product, containing 6.9 billion transistors. The die size of the A12 is 83.27 mm², 5% smaller than the A11. It is manufactured in a package on package (PoP) together with 4 GiB of LPDDR4X memory in the iPhone XS and XS Max and 3 GB of LPDDR4X memory in the iPhone XR, the iPad Air (2019), the 5th generation iPad mini, and the iPad (2020). 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.

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.

Die Block Comparison (mm²)

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

• iPhone XS and XS Max
• iPhone XR
• iPad Mini (5th generation)
• iPad Air (3rd generation)
• iPad (8th generation)
• Apple TV 4K (2nd generation)

Gallery

Apple A12 SoC on iPhone XR main logic board.

See also

• Apple silicon, the range of ARM-based processors designed by Apple
• Apple A12X
• Comparison of Armv8-A processors

References

Preceded by Apple A11 Bionic

Apple A12 Bionic 2018

Succeeded by Apple A13 Bionic