Engineering:Apple A13

From HandWiki
Short description: System on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc.
Apple A13 Bionic
Apple A13 Bionic.jpg
General Info
LaunchedSeptember 10, 2019
Designed byApple Inc.
Common manufacturer(s)
Max. CPU clock rateto 2.65 GHz 
Architecture and classification
ApplicationMobile
Min. feature size7 nm
Microarchitecture"Lightning" and "Thunder"
Instruction setA64 ARMv8.4-A[1]
Physical specifications
Transistors
  • 8.5 billion
Cores
GPU(s)Apple-designed 4 core
History
PredecessorApple A12
SuccessorApple A14

The Apple A13 Bionic is a 64-bit ARM-based system on a chip (SoC), designed by Apple Inc.[2] It appears in the iPhone 11, 11 Pro/Pro Max, the 9th generation iPad,[3] the iPhone SE (2nd generation)[4] and the Studio Display.[5] Apple states that the two high performance cores are 20% faster with 30% lower power consumption than the Apple A12's, and the four high efficiency cores are 20% faster with 40% lower power consumption than the A12's.

Design

The Apple A13 Bionic features an Apple-designed 64-bit six-core CPU implementing ARMv8.4-A[1] ISA, with two high-performance cores running at 2.65 GHz[6] called Lightning and four energy-efficient cores called Thunder. The Lightning cores feature machine learning accelerators called AMX blocks. Apple claims the AMX blocks are six times faster at matrix multiplication than the Apple A12's Vortex cores. The AMX blocks are capable of up to one trillion single-precision operations per second.[6]

The A13 integrates an Apple-designed four-core graphics processing unit (GPU) with 20% faster graphics performance and 40% lower power consumption than the A12's. Apple claims their A13's eight-core Neural Engine dedicated neural network hardware is 20% faster and consumes 15% lower power than the A12's.[3][6][7]

It is manufactured by TSMC on their 2nd generation 7 nm N7P (not to be confused with '7 nm+' or 'N7+'),[8] and contains 8.5 billion transistors.[9][10]

The A13 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.[11]

Die block comparison (mm²)[12]
SoC A13 (7 nm enhanced) A12 (7 nm)
Process node TSMC N7P TSMC N7
Total die 98.48 83.27
Big core 2.61 2.07
Small core 0.58 0.43
CPU complex (incl. cores) 13.47 11.16
GPU core 3.25 3.23
GPU total 15.28 14.88
NPU 4.64 5.79

Products that include the Apple A13 Bionic

Gallery

Apple A13 SoC on iPhone 11 (upper) main logic board


See also

  • Apple silicon, the range of ARM-based processors designed by Apple
  • Apple M1
  • Comparison of Armv8-A processors

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 "llvm-project/AArch64.td at llvm/master · llvm/llvm-project · GitHub". https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/commit/903e5c3028d61481c570c09eeb5e7a920c2d7d38. 
  2. Hollister, Sean (10 September 2019). "Apple says its new A13 Bionic chip has the fastest smartphone CPU and GPU ever". https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/9/10/20857177/apple-iphone-11-processor-a13-cpu-speed-graphics-specs. 
  3. 3.0 3.1 "Apple announces A13 Bionic chip for iPhone 11" (in en-US). 2019-09-10. https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/10/apple-announces-a13-matrix-chip-with-amx-component/. 
  4. "iPhone SE - Technical Specifications" (in en-US). https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/specs/. 
  5. Mayo, Benjamin (2022-03-08). "Apple announces new $1599 27-inch 5K Apple Studio Display, featuring Center Stage webcam" (in en-US). https://9to5mac.com/2022/03/08/apple-announces-new-studio-display/. 
  6. 6.0 6.1 6.2 Frumusanu, Andrei. "Apple Announces New iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, & iPhone 11 Pro Max". https://www.anandtech.com/show/14859/apple-announces-new-iphone-11-iphone-11-pro-iphone-11-pro-max. 
  7. Owen, Malcolm (September 11, 2019). "More power with less: Apple's A13 Bionic is faster and more power efficient" (in en). https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/09/11/more-power-with-less-apples-a13-fusion-is-faster-and-more-power-efficient. 
  8. Frumusanu, Andrei. "The Apple iPhone 11, 11 Pro & 11 Pro Max Review: Performance, Battery, & Camera Elevated". https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro-and-max-review. 
  9. Zafar, Ramish (2019-09-10). "Apple A13 For iPhone 11 Has 8.5 Billion Transistors, Quad-Core GPU" (in en-US). https://wccftech.com/apple-a13-iphone-11-transistors-gpu/. 
  10. (in en) Introducing iPhone 11 Pro — Apple Youtube Video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVEemOmHw9Y&t=70, retrieved 2019-09-11 
  11. "iPhone 11 - Technical Specifications". https://support.apple.com/kb/SP804?locale=en_US. 
  12. Frumusanu, Andrei. "The Apple A13 SoC: Lightning & Thunder". https://www.anandtech.com/show/14892/the-apple-iphone-11-pro-and-max-review/2. 
Preceded by
Apple A12 Bionic
Apple A13 Bionic
2019
Succeeded by
Apple A14 Bionic