Apple A12

Apple Walks Ars Through the iPad Pro’s A12X System on a Chip →

November 8, 2018 · 10:07

Samuel Axon:

The iPad Pro outperforms every MacBook Pro we tested except for the most recent, most powerful 15-inch MacBook Pro with an 8th generation Intel Core i9 CPU. Generally, these laptops cost three times as much as the iPad Pro.

“You typically only see this kind of performance in bigger machines—bigger machines with fans,” Shimpi claimed. “You can deliver it in this 5.9 millimeter thin iPad Pro because we’ve built such a good, such a very efficient architecture.”

The hardware is plenty fast. Now we just need software to make real use of all this horsepower.

Apple A12 SoC for iPhone Goes Into Production →

May 24, 2018 · 11:51

Mark Gurman, for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc. manufacturing partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. has started mass production of next-generation processors for new iPhones launching later this year, according to people familiar with the matter.

The processor, likely to be called the A12 chip, will use a 7-nanometer design that can be smaller, faster and more efficient than the 10-nanometer chips in current Apple devices like the iPhone 8 and iPhone X, the people said. 

I remember exporting a video from iMovie for iOS a few years ago (an iPad Mini 2 if I recall correctly) and it took close to 30 minutes for a full 1080p render. I recently tried the same thing on an iPad Pro 10.5” — this time it was done before I returned to my couch from turning the kettle on in the kitchen, which took me less than a minute.

Apple’s chip team is amazing and I can’t wait to see what they’ll bring to the market in the future.