Apple A15

The Apple A15 Bionic is a 64-bit system on a chip (SoC), designed by Apple Inc. It was announced on September 14, 2021 and released the following September 24th for the 6th-generation iPad mini and the iPhone 13 series.

Design
The A15 contains 6 CPU cores, including 2 high-performance cores and 4 high-efficiency cores which provide a 40% performance improvement over the Apple A12. Its 16 Neural Engine cores can perform up to 15.8 trillion operations per second. It operates at up to 3.23 GHz on the iPhone 13 series and 2.92 GHz on the 6th-generation iPad mini.

The GPU contains 5 cores in the 6th-generation iPad mini, iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max. However, the entry-level iPhone 13 and 13 mini are advertised with only 4 GPU cores, indicating the possible use of. Benchmarks indicate improved GPU performance over previous generations. However, benchmarks submitted after continued use indicate the presence of. The versions used in the iPhone 13 and 13 mini each contain 4 GB of DRAM; the versions used in the iPhone 13 Pro and 13 Pro Max each contain 6 GB. The high-end versions with 6 GB of DRAM and 5 GPU cores were also used in the iPhone 14 and 14 Plus in the following year. The image signal processor was later described as supporting the Photonic Engine on those models.

Products with the Apple A15

 * iPad mini (6th generation) — 4 GB on package, 5 GPU cores
 * iPhone 13 — 4 GB on package, 4 GPU cores
 * iPhone 13 mini — 4 GB on package, 4 GPU cores
 * iPhone 13 Pro — 6 GB on package, 5 GPU cores
 * iPhone 13 Pro Max — 6 GB on package, 5 GPU cores
 * iPhone 14 — 6 GB on package, 5 GPU cores
 * iPhone 14 Plus — 6 GB on package, 5 GPU cores

Articles

 * Apple A15 Die Shot and Annotation – IP Block Area Analysis by Dylan Patel at SemiAnalysis (2021-10-05)
 * The Apple A15 SoC Performance Review: Faster & More Efficient by by Andrei Frumusanu at AnandTech (2021-10-04)
 * Report suggests Apple's A15 Bionic lacks significant CPU upgrades due to chip team brain drain by Mikey Campbell at AppleInsider (2021-09-15)
 * Apple CPU Gains Grind To A Halt And The Future Looks Dim As The Impact From The CPU Engineer Exodus To Nuvia And Rivos Starts To Bleed In by Dylan Patel at SemiAnalysis (2021-09-14)