The Apple A9X 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 central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

system on a chip A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or Electronics, electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with computer memory, ...

(SoC) designed by

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

, part of the

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 family, ARM architecture. They are used in nearly all of the company's devices including Mac ...

series. It first appeared in the

iPad Pro The iPad Pro is a series of tablet computers, positioned as the premium line of Apple Inc., Apple's iPad brand. It runs iPadOS, a tablet-optimized Fork (software development), fork of the iOS operating system. Early models were distinguished f ...

, which was announced on September 9, 2015 and was released on November 11, 2015. The A9X has the M9 motion coprocessor embedded in it, something not seen in previous chip generations. It is a variant of the A9 and Apple claims that it has 80% more CPU performance and twice the GPU performance of its predecessor, the A8X. The latest software update for the iPad Pro 12.9 1st generation & 9.7 using this chip was iPadOS 16.7.9, released on July 29, 2024, as it was discontinued with the release of

iPadOS 17 iPadOS 17 is the fifth major release of the iPadOS operating system developed by Apple for its iPad line of tablet computers. The successor to iPadOS 16, it was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 5, 2023 ...

in 2023 due to hardware limitations of the A9X. It is expected to continue receiving security updates for some period of time.

Design

The A9X features an Apple-designed 64-bit ARMv8-A dual-core CPU called "Twister". It offers double the memory bandwidth and double the storage performance of the Apple A8X. Unlike the A9, the A9X does not contain an L3 cache due to its significant DRAM bandwidth. The A9X is paired with 4 GB of LPDDR4 memory in the 12.9" iPad Pro and 2 GB of LPDDR4 memory in the 9.7" iPad Pro with a total bandwidth of 51.2 GB/s. This high bandwidth is necessary to feed the SoC's custom 12-core PowerVR Series7XT GPU. The RAM is not included in the A9X package unlike its sibling, the A9. The A9X uses the same NAND interface as the A9, which uses an Apple-designed

NVMe NVM Express (NVMe) or Non-Volatile Memory Host Controller Interface Specification (NVMHCIS) is an open, logical-device interface specification for accessing a computer's non-volatile storage media usually attached via the PCI Express bus. The in ...

-based controller that communicates over a

PCIe PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe, is a high-speed standard used to connect hardware components inside computers. It is designed to replace older expansion bus standards such as Peripher ...

connection. The iPad Pro's NAND design is more akin to a PC-class

SSD A solid-state drive (SSD) is a type of solid-state storage device that uses Integrated circuit, integrated circuits to store data persistence (computer science), persistently. It is sometimes called semiconductor storage device, solid-stat ...

than embedded flash memory common on mobile devices. This gives the iPad Pro a significant storage performance advantage over competitors which often use

mSATA SATA (Serial AT Attachment) is a computer bus interface that connects host adapter, host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives, optical drives, and solid-state drives. Serial ATA succeeded the earlier Parallel ATA (PAT ...

eMMC MultiMediaCard, officially abbreviated as MMC, is a memory card standard used for solid-state storage. Unveiled in 1997 by SanDisk and Siemens, MMC is based on a surface-contact low-pin-count serial interface using a single memory stack subst ...

to connect to their storage systems. The A9X has video codec encoding support for H.264. It has decoding 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 co ...

, H.264, MPEG‑4, and

Motion JPEG Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, Motion JPEG e ...

Products that include the Apple A9X

* iPad Pro 9.7-inch (2016) * iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2015) * Apple TV 4K (unreleased)

References

{{Application ARM-based chips Computer-related introductions in 2015 Apple silicon

Design

Products that include the Apple A9X

See also

References