The Apple A5X is a 32-bit
system on a chip
A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memor ...
(SoC) designed by
Apple Inc. and manufactured by
Samsung
The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...
. Apple used it only in the
third-generation iPad. The A5X is a high-performance variant of the
Apple A5. Apple claimed during their media event on March 7, 2012 that the quad-core
PowerVR SGX543MP4 graphics processing unit
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, m ...
(GPU) in the A5X is two times faster than the GPU in the A5, as the A5X GPU contains two more cores than the dual-core version GPU in the A5.
The last operating system update Apple provided for a mobile device containing an A5X (third-generation iPad cellular models) was
iOS 9.3.6, which was released on July 22, 2019 as it was discontinued with the release of
iOS 10
iOS 10 is the tenth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc., being the successor to iOS 9. It was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference on June 13, 2016, and was released on September ...
in 2016.
Design
Apple designed the A5X chip specifically for the third-generation iPad to provide the additional graphical performance it required for its new
Retina display. The A5X chip features a dual-core 45 nm
ARM Cortex-A9
The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore is a 32-bit multi-core processor that provides up to 4 cache-coherent cores, each implementing the ARM v7 architecture instruction set. It was introduced in 2007.
Features
Key features of the Cortex-A9 core are:
* ...
CPU
with a
clock rate
In computing, the clock rate or clock speed typically refers to the frequency at which the clock generator of a processor can generate pulses, which are used to synchronize the operations of its components, and is used as an indicator of the pr ...
of 1
GHz,
and a quad-core 32 nm
PowerVR SGX543MP4 GPU
with a clock rate of 250 MHz. Compared to the A5, the memory interface of the A5X is twice the size. The A5X memory interface subsystem utilizes four 32 bits wide
LPDDR2 memory controllers.
Unlike the
Apple A4 and the A5, the A5X uses a metal
heat spreader (along with thermal paste) to cover the flip chip underneath.
The die takes up 162.94 mm
2 of area
—a 36.5% increase in area used over the 119.32 mm
2 die of the S5L8940 version of the A5.
The A5X does not use the
package on package (PoP) method of installation to support RAM—RAM is found externally from the A5X chip.
Products featuring the Apple A5X
*
iPad (3rd generation)
See also
*
Apple silicon
Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture. It is the basis of most new Mac computers as well as iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Apple TV, ...
, the range of ARM-based SoCs designed by Apple for their products.
References
{{Application ARM-based chips
Computer-related introductions in 2012
Apple silicon