The Apple A15 Bionic is a

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit Integer (computer science), integers, memory addresses, or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing unit, CPUs and arithmetic logic unit, ALUs are those ...

ARM-based

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), memory ...

(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 ...

It is used in the iPhone 13 and 13 Mini, iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max,

iPad Mini (6th generation) The sixth-generation iPad Mini (stylized and marketed as iPad mini and colloquially referred to as iPad Mini 6) is a tablet computer in the iPad Mini line, designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It was announced on September 14, 2021, ...

iPhone SE (3rd generation) The third-generation iPhone SE (also known as the iPhone SE 3 or the iPhone SE 2022) is a smartphone designed and developed by Apple Inc. It is part of the List of iOS and iPadOS devices, 15th generation of the iPhone, alongside the iPhone 13, ...

, iPhone 14 and 14 Plus and Apple TV 4K (3rd generation).

Design

The Apple A15 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 Avalanche running at 3.24 GHz and four energy-efficient cores called Blizzard running at 2.01 GHz. Apple claims the A15 in the iPhones is 50% faster than the competition. Apple claims the A15 in the iPad Mini 6 is 40% faster than the A12. An in-depth breakdown by

Anandtech ''AnandTech'' is an online computer hardware magazine owned by Future plc. It was founded in 1997 by then-14-year-old Anand Lal Shimpi, who served as CEO and editor-in-chief until August 30, 2014, with Ryan Smith replacing him as editor-in-chief ...

revealed that "compared to the A14, the new A15 increases the peak single-core frequency of the two-performance core cluster by 8%, now reaching up to 3240MHz compared to the 2998MHz of the previous generation. When both performance cores are active, their operating frequency goes up by 10%, both now running at 3180MHz compared to the previous generation’s 2890MHz". The A15 contains 15 billion transistors, a 27.1% increase from the A14's transistor count of 11.8 billion. It includes dedicated

neural network A neural network is a network or circuit of biological neurons, or, in a modern sense, an artificial neural network, composed of artificial neurons or nodes. Thus, a neural network is either a biological neural network, made up of biological ...

hardware that Apple calls a new 16-core Neural Engine. The Neural Engine can perform 15.8 trillion operations per second, faster than A14's 11 trillion operations per second (+ 43%). The A15 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 ...

(ISP) with improved computational photography capabilities. Apple also boosted performance by doubling the system cache to 32MB. The A15 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 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distr ...

. It has decoding support for HEVC, H.264, MPEG‑4 Part 2, 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 ...

. A15 is manufactured by TSMC, reportedly on their second-generation 5 nm fabrication process, N5P.

GPU

The A15 integrates an Apple-designed five-core GPU for the

iPad mini (6th generation) The sixth-generation iPad Mini (stylized and marketed as iPad mini and colloquially referred to as iPad Mini 6) is a tablet computer in the iPad Mini line, designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It was announced on September 14, 2021, ...

iPhone 13 Pro The iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max are smartphones designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the flagship smartphones in the fifteenth generation of the iPhone, succeeding the iPhone 12 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro Max respective ...

and 13 Pro Max, and

iPhone 14 The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus (also stylized as iPhone 14+) are smartphones designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the sixteenth generation of iPhones, succeeding the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Mini, and was announced durin ...

and 14 Plus. One GPU core is disabled in the

, and

iPhone 13 The iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Mini (stylized as iPhone 13 mini) are smartphones designed, developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. They are the fifteenth generation of iPhones (succeeding the iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Mini respectively). They ...

and 13 Mini, resulting in a four-core GPU for these models.

Products that include the Apple A15 Bionic

* iPhone 14 & 14 Plus – 5-core GPU * iPhone 13 & 13 Mini – 4-core GPU * iPhone 13 Pro & 13 Pro Max – 5-core GPU *

– 4-core GPU *

– 5-core GPU; CPU underclocked to 2.92 GHz from 3.23 GHz * Apple TV 4K (3rd generation) – 5-core GPU and 5-core CPU (Binned A15 with 1 efficiency CPU core disabled)

References

{{Application ARM-based chips Computer-related introductions in 2021 Apple silicon

Design

GPU

Products that include the Apple A15 Bionic

See also

References