Engineering:Apple A14

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Short description: System on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc.
Apple A14 Bionic
Apple A14.jpg
General Info
LaunchedSeptember 15, 2020
Designed byApple Inc.
Common manufacturer(s)
Product codeAPL1W01[1]
Max. CPU clock rateto 3.1 GHz 
Cache
L2 cache8 MB (performance cores)
4 MB (efficient cores)
16 MB (system cache) [2]
Architecture and classification
ApplicationMobile
Min. feature size5 nm
Microarchitecture"Firestorm" and "Icestorm"[3][4]
Instruction setA64; ARMv8.5-A[5]
Physical specifications
Transistors
  • 11.8 billion
Cores
GPU(s)Apple-designed 4 core
Products, models, variants
Variant(s)Apple M1
History
PredecessorApple A13
SuccessorApple A15

The Apple A14 Bionic is a 64-bit ARMv8.5-A[5] system on a chip (SoC), designed by Apple Inc. It appears in the fourth generation iPad Air, as well as iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. Apple states that the central processing unit (CPU) performs up to 40% faster than the A12, while the graphics processing unit (GPU) is up to 30% faster than the A12. It also includes a 16-core neural engine and new machine learning matrix accelerators that perform twice and ten times as fast, respectively.[6][7]

Design

The Apple A14 Bionic features an Apple-designed 64-bit, six-core CPU, implementing ARMv8[5] with two high-performance cores called Firestorm and four energy-efficient cores called Icestorm.[4]

The A14 integrates an Apple-designed four-core GPU with 30% faster graphics performance than the A12.[7] The A14 includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a new 16-core Neural Engine.[7] The Neural Engine can perform 11 trillion operations per second.[7] In addition to the separate Neural Engine, the A14 CPU includes second-generation machine learning matrix scalar multiplication accelerators (which Apple calls AMX blocks).[7][8] The A14 also includes a new image processor with improved computational photography capabilities.[9]

A14 is manufactured by TSMC on their first-generation 5 nm fabrication process, N5. This makes the A14 the first commercially available product to be manufactured on a 5 nm process node.[10] The transistor count has increased to 11.8 billion, a 38.8% increase from the A13's transistor count of 8.5 billion.[11][12] According to Semianalysis, the die size of A14 processor is 88 mm2, with a transistor density of 134 million transistors per mm2.[13] It is manufactured in a package on package (PoP) together with 4 GB of LPDDR4X memory in the iPhone 12[1] and 6 GB of LPDDR4X memory in the iPhone 12 Pro.[1]

The A14 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.[14] Codecs VP8 and VP9 are also unofficially supported. Next generation codec AV1 is not supported by hardware acceleration.[15]

The A14 would be later used as the basis for the M1 series of chips, used in various Macintosh and iPad models.

Products that include the Apple A14 Bionic

Variants

The table below shows the various SoCs based on the "Firestorm" and "Icestorm" microarchitectures.

Variant CPU

cores (P+E)

GPU
cores 		GPU
EU 		Graphics
ALU 		Memory (GB) Transistor
count
A14 6 (2+4) 4 64 512 4 - 6 11.8 billion
M1 8 (4+4) 7 112 896 8 - 16 16 billion
M1 8 128 1024
M1 Pro 8 (6+2) 14 224 1792 16 - 32 34 billion
M1 Pro 10 (8+2)
M1 Pro 16 256 2048
M1 Max 10 (8+2) 24 384 3072 32 - 64 57 billion
M1 Max 32 512 4096
M1 Ultra 20 (16+4) 48 768 6144 64 - 128 114 billion
M1 Ultra 64 1024 8192

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "iPhone 12 and 12 Pro Teardown". iFixit. 2020-10-20. https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+12+and+12+Pro+Teardown/137669. 
  2. ↑ "Apple A14 Die Annotation and Analysis – Terrifying Implications For The Industry". 2020-10-30. https://semianalysis.com/apple-a14-die-annotation-and-analysis-terrifying-implications-for-the-industry/. 
  3. ↑ Gurman, Mark; Wu, Debby; King, Ian (2020-04-23). "Apple Aims to Sell Macs With Its Own Chips Starting in 2021". https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-23/apple-aims-to-sell-macs-with-its-own-chips-starting-in-2021. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Frumusanu, Andrei (2020-09-15). "Apple Announces new 8th gen iPad with A12, iPad Air with 5nm A14 Chip". https://www.anandtech.com/show/16086/apple-announces-new-ipad-with-a12-ipad-air-with-5nm-a14-chip. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "llvm-project/AArch64TargetParser.def · llvm/lvm-project · GitHub". https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/blob/main/llvm/include/llvm/Support/AArch64TargetParser.def. 
  6. ↑ "Apple iPhone 12 - Full phone specifications" (Press release). 2020-10-13. Archived from the original on November 12, 2020. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 "Apple unveils all-new iPad Air with A14 Bionic, Apple's most advanced chip" (Press release). Apple. 2020-09-15. Archived from the original on September 20, 2020. Retrieved 2020-09-15.
  8. ↑ Ritchie, Rene (2020-09-28). "Apple A14 Bionic Explained — From iPad Air to iPhone 12". https://www.imore.com/apple-a14-bionic-explained-ipad-air-iphone-12. 
  9. ↑ "Apple introduces iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max with 5G" (Press release). Apple. 2020-10-13. Archived from the original on October 13, 2020. Retrieved 2020-10-13.
  10. ↑ Frumusanu, Andrei (2020-09-15). "Apple Announces 5nm A14 SoC - Meagre Upgrades, Or Just Less Power Hungry?". https://www.anandtech.com/show/16088/apple-announces-5nm-a14-soc-meagre-upgrades-or-less-power-hungry. 
  11. ↑ Sohail, Omar (2020-09-15). "Apple A14 Bionic Gets Highlighted With 11.8 Billion Transistors, 40% Higher Performance, New 6-Core CPU, and More" (in en-US). https://wccftech.com/apple-a14-bionic-details-11-8-billion-transistors-6-core-cpu-40-percent-performance-increase-more/. 
  12. ↑ 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/. 
  13. ↑ Patel, Dylan (2020-10-27). "Apple's A14 Packs 134 Million Transistors/mm², but Falls Short of TSMC's Density Claims" (in en-US). https://semianalysis.com/apples-a14-packs-134-million-transistors-mm2-but-falls-far-short-of-tsmcs-density-claims/. 
  14. ↑ "iPhone 12 - Technical Specifications". https://support.apple.com/kb/SP830?locale=en_US. 
  15. ↑ "Apple A14 Bionic - Benchmark, Test und Technische Daten". https://www.cpu-monkey.com/de/cpu-apple_a14_bionic-1693. 
Preceded by
Apple A13 Bionic 		Apple A14 Bionic
2020 		Succeeded by
Apple A15 Bionic (iPhone)
Apple M1 (iPad Air)




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