The Apple A7 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 iPhone 5S, which was announced on September 10, 2013, and the

iPad Air The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. Since then, the iPad product lin ...

and

iPad Mini 2 The iPad Mini 2 (formerly marketed as the iPad mini with Retina display, officially iPad mini 2 with Retina display) is a tablet computer designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It has a nearly identical design to its predecessor, the first-gener ...

, which were both announced on October 22, 2013. Apple states that it is up to twice as fast and has up to twice the graphics power compared to its predecessor, the

Apple A6 The Apple A6 is a 32-bit package on package (PoP) system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series. It was introduced on September 12, 2012, at the launch of the iPhone 5. Apple states that it is up to twice as fast ...

. It is the first 64-bit SoC to ship in a consumer

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

tablet computer A tablet computer, commonly shortened to tablet, is a mobile device, typically with a mobile operating system and touchscreen display processing circuitry, and a rechargeable battery in a single, thin and flat package. Tablets, being computers ...

. On March 21, 2017, the

iPad mini 2 The iPad Mini 2 (formerly marketed as the iPad mini with Retina display, officially iPad mini 2 with Retina display) is a tablet computer designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It has a nearly identical design to its predecessor, the first-gener ...

was discontinued, ending production of A7 chips. The latest software update for systems using this chip was iOS 12.5.7, released on January 23, 2023, as they were discontinued with the release of

iOS 13 iOS 13 is the thirteenth major release of the iOS mobile operating system developed by Apple for the iPhone, iPod Touch and HomePod. The successor to iOS 12, it was announced at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June ...

and

iPadOS 13 iPadOS 13 is the first major release of the iPadOS mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc. for their iPad line of tablet computers. The successor to iOS 12 on those devices, it was announced at the company's 2019 Worldwide Developers C ...

in 2019.

Design

The A7 features an Apple-designed 64-bit 1.3–1.4 GHz

ARMv8-A ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for computer processors. Arm Holdings develops the ISAs and lice ...

dual-core CPU, called Cyclone. The 64-bit A64 instruction set in the ARMv8-A architecture doubles the number of registers of the A7 compared to the ARMv7 architecture used in A6. It has 31 general purpose registers that are each 64-bits wide and 32 floating-point/

NEON Neon is a chemical element; it has symbol Ne and atomic number 10. It is the second noble gas in the periodic table. Neon is a colorless, odorless, inert monatomic gas under standard conditions, with approximately two-thirds the density of ...

registers that are each 128-bits wide. The A7 also integrates a

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

(GPU) which

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

believes to be a PowerVR G6430 in a four cluster configuration. The A7 has a per-core

L1 cache A CPU cache is a hardware cache used by the central processing unit (CPU) of a computer to reduce the average cost (time or energy) to access data from the main memory. A cache is a smaller, faster memory, located closer to a processor core, which ...

of 64 KB for data and 64 KB for instructions, a L2 cache of 1 MB shared by both CPU cores, and a 4 MB L3 cache that services the entire SoC. The A7 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 o ...

, a feature originally introduced in the A5, used for functionality related to the camera such as image stabilizing, color correction, and light balance. The A7 also includes an area called the "Secure Enclave" that stores and protects the data from the

Touch ID Touch ID is an electronic fingerprint recognition feature designed and released by Apple Inc. History In 2012, Apple acquired AuthenTec, a company focused on fingerprint-reading and identification management software, for $356 million. The acq ...

fingerprint sensor on the iPhone 5S and

iPad mini 3 The iPad Mini 3 (stylized and marketed as iPad mini 3) is the third-generation iPad Mini tablet computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It was announced alongside the iPad Air 2 on October 16, 2014 and released on October 22. It uses pri ...

. It has been speculated that the security of the data in the Secure Enclave is enforced by ARM's

TrustZone ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for computer processors. Arm Holdings develops the ISAs and lice ...

/ SecurCore technology. In a change from the

, the A7 SoC no longer services the accelerometer, gyroscope and compass. In order to reduce power consumption, this functionality has been moved to the new M7 motion

coprocessor A coprocessor is a computer processor used to supplement the functions of the primary processor (the CPU). Operations performed by the coprocessor may be floating-point arithmetic, graphics, signal processing, string processing, cryptography or ...

which appears to be a separate ARM-based microcontroller from

NXP Semiconductors NXP Semiconductors N.V. is a Dutch semiconductor manufacturing and design company with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. It is the third largest European semiconductor company by market capitalization as of 2024. The company employs approx ...

Apple A7 (APL0698)

Apple uses the APL0698 variant of the A7 chip, running at 1.3 GHz, in the iPhone 5S,

, and

iPad Mini 3 The iPad Mini 3 (stylized and marketed as iPad mini 3) is the third-generation iPad Mini tablet computer developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It was announced alongside the iPad Air 2 on October 16, 2014 and released on October 22. It uses pri ...

. This A7 is manufactured by

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

on a high-κ

metal gate A metal gate, in the context of a lateral metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) stack, is the gate electrode separated by an oxide from the transistor's channel – the gate material is made from a metal. In most MOS transistors since about the mid- ...

(HKMG) 28 nm process and the chip includes over 1 billion transistors on a die 102 mm² in size. According to ABI Research the A7 drew 1100 mA during fixed point operations and 520 mA during floating point operations, while its predecessor, the A6 processor in the iPhone 5, drew 485 mA and 320 mA. Google/Motorola Mobility’s Moto X Outpaces Competition with New Innovations
, ABI Research It is manufactured in a

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

(PoP) together with 1 GB of

LPDDR3 Low-Power Double Data Rate (LPDDR), also known as LPDDR SDRAM, is a type of synchronous dynamic random-access memory (SDRAM) that consumes less power than other random access memory designs and is thus targeted for mobile computing devices such ...

DRAM with a 64-bit wide memory interface onto the package.

Apple A7 (APL5698)

Apple uses the APL5698 variant of the A7 chip, running at 1.4 GHz, in the

. Its die is identical in size and layout to that of the first A7 and is manufactured by Samsung. However, unlike the first version of the A7, the A7 used in the iPad Air is not on a PoP, having no stacked RAM. Instead it uses a chip-on-board mounting, immediately adjacent DRAM, and is covered by a metallic heat spreader, similar to the

Apple A5X The Apple A5X is a 32-bit system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series, and manufactured by Samsung. It was introduced with and only used in the third-generation iPad, on March 7, 2012. The A5X is a high-perform ...

and A6X.

Patent litigation

The A7's

branch predictor In computer architecture, a branch predictor is a digital circuit that tries to guess which way a branch (e.g., an if–then–else structure) will go before this is known definitively. The purpose of the branch predictor is to improve the flow ...

was claimed to infringe on a 1998 patent. On October 14, 2015, a district judge found Apple guilty of infringing U.S. patent , "Table based data speculation circuit for parallel processing computer", on the Apple A7 and A8 processors. The patent is owned by

Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation is the independent nonprofit technology transfer organization serving the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Morgridge Institute for Research. It provides significant research support, granting tens o ...

(WARF), a firm affiliated with the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Uni ...

. On July 24, 2017, Apple was ordered to pay WARF $506 million for patent infringement. Apple filed an appellate brief on October 26, 2017, with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, that argued that Apple did not infringe on the patent owned by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. On September 28, 2018, the ruling was overturned on appeal and the award thrown out by the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals. The patent expired in December 2016.

Products that include the Apple A7

* iPhone 5S * iPad Air (1st generation) *

& Mini 3

Gallery

References

{{Application ARM-based chips Products introduced in 2013 Products and services discontinued in 2019 Computer-related introductions in 2013 Apple silicon