Apple A6 Die Revealed: 3-core GPU, < 100mm^2
by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 21, 2012 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- SoCs
- Apple
- Smartphones
- Mobile
- iPhone 5
Our good friends at UBM TechInsights sent over the first diffusion images of Apple's new A6 SoC. It's still too early to tell a lot but we have confirmation of a lot of things. The image above shows two 32-bit LPDDR2 memory channels and three GPU cores. We're likely looking at a PowerVR SGX 543MP3 running at 266MHz.
UBM estimates the die size at 95.04mm2 and the manufacturer as Samsung.
We'll have more details about the A6 and its performance shortly.
Source: UBM TechInsights
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tipoo - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
Are these images enough for us to know if this is the first shipping A15 core, or if it's a custom core from Apple? I know a lot of the evidence points to custom core, but can we know with complete certainty now?Fleeb - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
Wasn't it already said in previous articles it is a custom A7?tipoo - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
As I said, but nothing was known with complete certainty afaik.EnzoFX - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
It was implied by their complete retraction of the A15 hype.bartoni - Friday, September 21, 2012 - link
The large diffusion image clearly shows that the dual A6 ARM cores are unlike any other ARM processor core. The Cortex A15 may have been the starting point, but Apple's A6 cores have a full-custom stack-based design (like Intel or older AMD designs) as opposed to the more common standard-cell automated place-and-route sea-of-gates (like AMD Bobcat & Jaguar) approach.Roughly speaking a 1.2GHz Cortex A15 core with an improved bus and memory controller might reach about 2X the performance of the 800MHz ARM Cortex A9 cores in the A5.
jameskatt - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - link
So what you are saying is that Apple has achieved ARM A15 speeds using a custom dual A7 with vastly improved memory speed, which uses a lot less power and die space than the A15.That's an amazing feat from Apple!
ImSpartacus - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - link
Wait a minute, I don't understand where he implied that A7 was being used (in any capacity).Zink - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - link
Probably just confused about Cortex-A7 vs the current ARM v7s instruction set.tipoo - Saturday, September 22, 2012 - link
" Roughly speaking a 1.2GHz Cortex A15 core with an improved bus and memory controller might reach about 2X the performance of the 800MHz ARM Cortex A9 cores in the A5."I would think it's more than that, just going from 800 to 1200 is 1.5x the speed, add in better memory controllers(which is a big area A9 suffered) and you might just get to 2x without huge A15 cores.
Zingam - Tuesday, September 25, 2012 - link
Didn't they say it is a custom design according to requirements by Steve Jobs set 4 years ago?