The Apple A14 Bionic is a

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A co ...

ARMv8.5-A system on a chip (SoC), designed by

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

It appears in the fourth generation iPad Air and tenth generation iPad, as well as

iPhone 12 Mini The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini (stylized and marketed as iPhone 12 mini) are a range of smartphones designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the fourteenth-generation, "affordable flagship" iPhones, succeeding the iPhone 11. ...

iPhone 12 The iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini (stylized and marketed as iPhone 12 mini) are a range of smartphones designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the fourteenth-generation, "affordable flagship" iPhones, succeeding the iPhone 11. ...

iPhone 12 Pro The iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max are smartphones designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the flagship smartphones in the fourteenth generation of the iPhone, succeeding the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 Pro Max, respe ...

, 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.

Design

The Apple A14 Bionic features an Apple-designed 64-bit, six-core CPU, implementing

ARMv8 ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured ...

with two high-performance cores called Firestorm and four energy-efficient cores called Icestorm. The A14 integrates an Apple-designed four-core GPU with 30% faster graphics performance than the A12. The A14 includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a new 16-core Neural Engine. The Neural Engine can perform 11 trillion operations per second. In addition to the separate Neural Engine, the A14 CPU includes second-generation machine learning matrix scalar multiplication accelerators (which Apple calls AMX blocks). The A14 also includes a new

image processor An image processor, also known as an image processing engine, image processing unit (IPU), or image signal processor (ISP), is a type of media processor or specialized digital signal processor (DSP) used for image processing, in digital cameras or ...

with improved computational photography capabilities. A14 is manufactured by

TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semiconductor company, the world ...

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 Semiconductor device fabrication is the process used to manufacture semiconductor devices, typically integrated circuit (IC) chips such as modern computer processors, microcontrollers, and memory chips such as NAND flash and DRAM that are p ...

. The transistor count has increased to 11.8 billion, a 38.8% increase from the A13's transistor count of 8.5 billion. According to Semianalysis, the die size of A14 processor is 88 mm², with a transistor density of 134 million transistors per mm². It is manufactured in a

package on package Package on a package (PoP) is an integrated circuit packaging method to vertically combine discrete logic and memory ball grid array (BGA) packages. Two or more packages are installed atop each other, i.e. stacked, with a standard interface to rou ...

(PoP) together with 4 GB of

LPDDR4X Low-Power Double Data Rate (LPDDR), also known as LPDDR SDRAM, is a type of synchronous dynamic random-access memory that consumes less power and is targeted for mobile computers and devices such as mobile phones. Older variants are also known a ...

memory in the iPhone 12 and 6 GB of LPDDR4X memory in the iPhone 12 Pro. The A14 has video codec encoding support for

HEVC High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC), also known as H.265 and MPEG-H Part 2, is a video compression standard designed as part of the MPEG-H project as a successor to the widely used Advanced Video Coding (AVC, H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10). In compar ...

and H.264. It has decoding support for HEVC, H.264, MPEG‑4 Part 2, and Motion JPEG. The A14 would be later used as the basis for the M1 series of chips, used in various

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

and

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...

models.

Products that include the Apple A14 Bionic

iPad (10th generation) The iPad 10.9-inch (officially iPad (10th generation), unofficially known as the iPad 10) is a tablet computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. as the successor to the ninth-generation iPad. It was announced on October 18, 2022, and was re ...

iPad Air (4th generation) The iPad Air (4th generation), informally referred to as iPad Air 4, is a tablet computer designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. It was announced by Apple on September 15, 2020. Pre-orders began on October 16, 2020, and shipping began ...

* iPhone 12 & 12 Mini * iPhone 12 Pro & 12 Pro Max

Variants

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

References

{{Application ARM-based chips Computer-related introductions in 2020 Apple silicon

Design

Products that include the Apple A14 Bionic

Variants

See also

References