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Apple A6

System-on-a-chip designed by Apple Inc

Apple A6
Summary

System-on-a-chip designed by Apple Inc

FieldValue
nameApple A6
imageApple A6 Chip.jpg
image_sizeframelessupright=1.25
captionThe A6 processor
produced-startSeptember 21, 2012
produced-endSeptember 9, 2015 (February 17, 2016 India)
slowest1.3 GHz
size-from32 nm
designfirmApple Inc.
manuf1Samsung
archARMv7-A: ARM, Thumb-2 with "armv7s" extensions (integer division, VFPv4, Advanced SIMDv2)
microarchSwift
codeS5L8950X
numcores2
l1cache32 KB instruction + 32 KB data
l2cache1 MB
gpuPowerVR SGX543MP3 (triple-core)
applicationMobile
predecessorApple A5 (iPhone)
Apple A5X (iPad)
successorApple A7
variantApple A6X

| produced-start = September 21, 2012 | produced-end = September 9, 2015 (February 17, 2016 India) | slow-unit = | fast-unit = | size-from = 32 nm | size-to = Apple A5X (iPad)

The Apple A6 is a 32-bit package on package (PoP) system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series. It was introduced on September 12, 2012, at the launch of the iPhone 5. Apple states that it is up to twice as fast and has up to twice the graphics power compared with its predecessor, the Apple A5. Software updates for devices using this chip ceased in 2019, with the release of iOS 10.3.4 on the iPhone 5 as it was discontinued with the release of iOS 11 in 2017.

Design

The Apple A6 is said to use a 1.3 GHz custom Apple-designed ARMv7-A architecture based dual-core CPU, called Swift, rather than a licensed CPU from ARM like in previous designs, and an integrated 266 MHz triple-core PowerVR SGX543MP3 graphics processing unit (GPU). The Swift core in the A6 uses a new tweaked instruction set featuring some elements of the ARM Cortex-A15 such as support for the Advanced SIMD v2, and VFPv4. Analysis suggests that the Swift core has a triple-wide frontend and two FPUs, compared with a two-wide core with a single FPU in the Cortex-A9 based predecessor.

The A6 processor package also incorporates 1 GB of LPDDR2-1066 RAM compared with 512MB of LPDDR2-800 RAM in the Apple A5 providing double the memory capacity while increasing the theoretical memory bandwidth from 6.4 GB/s to 8.5 GB/s. The A6 includes an upgraded image signal processor (ISP), that compared with the ISP in the A5, improves the speed of image capture, low-light performance, noise reduction, and video stabilization.

The A6 is manufactured by Samsung on a high-κ metal gate (HKMG) 32 nm process and the chip is 96.71 mm2 large, which is 22% smaller than the A5. The A6 also consumes less energy than its predecessor.

A version of the A6 with higher frequency and four graphic cores is called Apple A6X and is found only in the fourth generation iPad.

Products that include the Apple A6

  • iPhone 5
  • iPhone 5C

References

References

  1. Satpathy, Sambit. (February 17, 2016). "Apple iPhone 4s, iPhone 5c finally discontinued in India: Report". BGR.in.
  2. "A few things iOS developers ought to know about the ARM architecture – Wandering Coder".
  3. (2012-09-12). "Apple Introduces iPhone 5". Apple.
  4. (2012-09-26). "Apple's A6 CPU actually clocked at around 1.3 GHz, per new Geekbench report". Engadget.
  5. Anand Lal Shimpi. (2012-09-15). "iPhone 5's A6 SoC: Not A15 or A9, a Custom Apple Core Instead". AnandTech.
  6. (2012-10-16). "The iPhone 5 Review - Decoding Swift". AnandTech.
  7. (2012-09-21). "Apple A6 Die Revealed: 3-core GPU, <100mm^2". Anandtech.com.
  8. (September 15, 2012). "iPhone 5 Memory Size and Speed Revealed: 1 GB LPDDR2-1066". [[AnandTech]].
  9. Hollister, Sean. (September 12, 2012). "The Apple A6: a smaller processor for the iPhone 5 with twice the performance". [[The Verge]].
  10. (September 21, 2012). "Apple iPhone 5 – the A6 Application Processor". Chipworks.
  11. (2012-09-25). "Apple A6 Teardown". ifixit.com.
  12. (2012-09-12). "Apple: A6 chip in iPhone 5 has 2x CPU power, 2x graphics performance, yet consumes less energy". Engadget.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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