Click the blue text above to follow: “Technology Report”
Hello everyone, I am Keke~
Please clickthe blue text in the upper left corner to follow me!
A4: Apple’s debut, single-core 45nm Cortex A8 core, the development idea was based on Samsung S5PC110, merely an increase in frequency, so strictly speaking, this does not count as Apple’s true research and development achievement. The A4 chip is Apple’s first generation of self-developed chips, launched in January 2010 with the iPhone 4.
A5: Equipped in Jobs’ last work, the iPhone 4S, Apple’s first dual-core chip, architecture upgraded to Cortex-A9. A5 is Apple’s first dual-core processor, launched in 2011 alongside the iPad 2.
A6: Designed by Apple’s subsidiary Intrinsity, manufactured by Samsung with a 32nm process, performance significantly improved, about twice that of A5, at that time it pressed the Android quad-core king underfoot! A6 is Apple’s first non-standard ARM architecture processor, truly self-developed, launched with the iPhone 5 in September 2012.
A7: A revolutionary chip, it adopts a brand new 64-bit design, using a 28nm process, with a frequency of 1.3GHz, and began to be equipped with an M low-power coprocessor. A7 is the first 64-bit mobile processor in history, launched in 2013, first applied in the iPhone 5s.
A8, A9, A10: Regular upgrades, chip development encountered bottlenecks, Apple began to passively squeeze toothpaste.
A11 Bionic: A performance monster, TSMC’s 10nm process, transistor count reached 4.3 billion, six-core structure, neural network engine, etc., now basically on par with Snapdragon 865. A11 is Apple’s first chip where CPU, GPU, performance controller, and neural network engine are all independently developed, first applied in iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X.
A12: Self-developed Fusion architecture, general performance upgrade, focus on the neural network engine upgraded from two cores in A11 to four cores, capable of performing 500 trillion calculations per second. A12 is a six-core bionic chip released in 2018, first applied in iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR.
A13 Bionic: Process upgraded to 7nm, 8.5 billion transistors, performance greatly improved, power consumption significantly reduced, currently no one can shake its position! A13 is a bionic chip released in September 2019, first applied in iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max.
The performance of A9 is similar to that of A12 in power-saving mode, A12 can use A9, A9 is Apple’s most significant upgrade. A9’s performance is two to three times that of contemporary Android, and after that, Apple has not had such a significant improvement. The iPhone 6s can last until 2025, from its launch in 2015 to 2025 it can be used for ten years, which phone is this strong?
A9 is twice as strong as A8, how could it be squeezing toothpaste? Think carefully about how terrifying it is that a processor from five years ago can still run games like Honor of Kings and PUBG smoothly at low quality with high frame rate; A8 uses a big and small core configuration, while A9 uses dual big cores, so daily use feels very smooth for this reason; later A10 adopts a configuration of two big and two small cores, which is very close to A9 in experience, the advantage is that it uses small cores more efficiently for power saving. A12’s performance upgrade is also not ordinary… the GPU performance of A12 has almost doubled… in recent years, the one truly squeezing toothpaste is A13 [slapping face][slapping face][slapping face] but only relatively, the performance improvement is still considerable.
Apple’s semiconductor department can be said to be Apple’s greatest asset, as it provides the processing power they need, maintains creativity, and continues to lead the technology industry. Chip designers and engineers are crucial to Apple’s future, and their importance to Apple products will only increase.
There is a joke in the industry: the only thing that can defeat Apple’s A-series processors is the A-series itself! This achievement took Apple a full ten years from A4 to A13, as the saying goes, a sword is forged in ten years, and Apple has done it! In fact, there is not much to say about Apple’s A-series processors, after all, they are only used in their own products, only used in iOS (as well as Apple Watch and some Macs), and the information Apple releases is also quite limited. What people can remember is really just its continuous leading and powerful performance. However, for manufacturers, this is basically the ultimate goal.
