While a new iPhone was a no-show , the new iPad Air revealed the A14 Bionic SoC at Apple’s “Time Flies” event. Moving forward with their silicon in mobile concept, Apple is under observation this year as they ended their ties with Intel a few months back and are planning on using their own chips for Macbook. A14 has brought about a revolution as it is the first in the industry to have a 5nm manufacturing process. A14 Bionic takes your conventional high performance offered by Apple an extra-mile with the new features onboard.
The CPU on A14 Bionic is a six-core CPU with 4 high-efficiency cores and 2-high performance cores. Just like every other chipset reveal by Apple, there was no information available about the clock speed of the unit. Compared to the A12 Bionic, Apple promises A14 Bionic to have a 40% improvement in CPU capabilities. The new chipset has also been estimated to draw about 8% less power than the last generation. This has not been officially released by Apple, but rather been calculated by several tech experts comparing iPad across the two generations. The GPU is a 4-core unit with a 30% improvement from A12 Bionic, as promised by Apple.
A14 also includes a 16-core Neural Engine which is used by Apple to process certain AI-softwares such as image recognition and voice recognition. It promises a throughput of 11 Trillion operations per second. The chipset also has a dedicated Secure Enclave for security and privacy related tasks. The actual upper limit and capabilities of this processor will most probably be revealed with the next generation of iPhone. However, it is safe to say that Apple is prepared to let go of their ARM-based processors and shift entirely to indigenous chipsets.
