 | |
| General information | |
|---|---|
| Launched | September 14, 2021 |
| Designed by | Apple Inc. |
| Common manufacturer | |
| Product code | APL1W07[1] |
| Max.CPUclock rate | to 3.23 GHz[2] (2.93 GHz in iPad Mini 6)[3] |
| Cache | |
| L2 cache | 12 MB (performance cores) 4 MB (efficient cores) |
| Last level cache | 32 MB (system cache) |
| Architecture and classification | |
| Application | Mobile |
| Technology node | 5 nm (N5P) |
| Microarchitecture | "Avalanche" and "Blizzard" |
| Instruction set | ARMv8.6-A[4] |
| Physical specifications | |
| Transistors |
|
| Cores |
|
| GPU | Apple-designed 4- or 5- core GPU |
| Products, models, variants | |
| Variant | |
| History | |
| Predecessor | Apple A14 Bionic |
| Successors | Apple A16 Bionic (iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, iPad 11th Generation,iPhone 15, iPhone 15 Plus), Apple A18 (iPhone 16e) |
TheApple A15 Bionic is a64-bitARM-basedsystem on a chip (SoC) designed byApple Inc., part of theApple silicon series. It is used in theiPhone 13 and 13 Mini,iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max,iPad Mini (6th generation),iPhone SE (3rd generation),iPhone 14 and 14 Plus andApple TV 4K (3rd generation).[6]
The Apple A15 Bionic features an Apple-designed 64-bit six-coreCPU implementingARMv8 with two high-performance cores calledAvalanche running at 3.24 GHz and four energy-efficient cores calledBlizzard 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.[7] An in-depth breakdown byAnandtech 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".[8][9]
The A15 contains 15 billion transistors, a 27.1% increase from theA14's transistor count of 11.8 billion. It includes dedicatedneural network hardware that Apple calls a new 16-core Neural Engine.[10] The Neural Engine can perform 15.8 trillion operations per second, faster than A14's 11 trillion operations per second (+ 43%).[10] The A15 also includes a newimage processor (ISP) with improved computational photography capabilities.[11] Apple also boosted performance by doubling the system cache to 32MB.[12]
The A15 has video codec encoding support forHEVC,H.264, and ProRes (iPhone 13 Pro only). It has decoding support for HEVC, H.264,MPEG‑4 Part 2, ProRes, andMotion JPEG.[13]
A15 is manufactured by TSMC, reportedly on their second-generation 5 nm fabrication process, N5P.[14][15]
The A15 integrates an Apple-designed five-core GPU for theiPad mini (6th generation),iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max,iPhone 14 and 14 Plus andApple TV 4K (3rd generation), though in the Apple TV variant one efficiency CPU core is disabled.[16] One GPU core is disabled in theiPhone SE (3rd generation), andiPhone 13 and 13 Mini, resulting in a four-core GPU for these models.[17]
Products that include the Apple A15 Bionic are:
The table below shows the various SoCs based on the "Avalanche" and "Blizzard" microarchitectures.[19]
| Variant | CPU cores (P+E)* | GPU cores | GPU EU | Graphics ALU | Neural Engine cores | Neural Engine performance | Memory (GB) | Transistor count |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A15 Bionic | 5 (2+3) | 5 | 80 | 640 | 16 | 15.8 TOPS | 4 | 15 billion |
| 6 (2+4) | 4 | 64 | 512 | 16 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 80 | 640 | 16 | 6 | ||||
| M2 | 8 (4+4) | 8 | 128 | 1024 | 16 | 8–24 | 20 billion | |
| 10 | 160 | 1280 | 16 | |||||
| M2 Pro | 10 (6+4) | 16 | 256 | 2048 | 16 | 16–32 | 40 billion | |
| 12 (8+4) | ||||||||
| 19 | 304 | 2432 | 16 | |||||
| M2 Max | 12 (8+4) | 30 | 480 | 3840 | 16 | 32–96 | 67 billion | |
| 38 | 608 | 4864 | 16 | |||||
| M2 Ultra | 24 (16+8) | 60 | 960 | 7680 | 32 | 31.6 TOPS | 64–192 | 134 billion |
| 76 | 1216 | 9728 | 32 |
* (Performance + Power efficiency)
| Preceded by | Apple A15 Bionic 2021 | Succeeded by |