Apple Reveals 5nm A14 Bionic SoC on New iPad Air

[harlan4096]

And brings machine learning acceleration to the iPad

During an online event today, Apple announced its latest silicon, the A14 Bionic. It's built on a 5nm processor and has six CPU cores, four GPU cores and a 16-core neural engine. The chip will debut in the new iPad Air, which will go on sale next month starting at $599.

The SoC has 11.8 billion transistors, which Apple said was quite the challenge, considering you're getting into measurements made in atoms. 

The CPU's six cores are broken into four high-efficiency cores and two high-performance cores. Apple claimed the offering's 40% faster than the previous generation and that graphics, via four cores, are 30% faster.

Apple's neural engine has 16 cores for 11 trillion operations per second, and, for the first time on iPad, is paired with a machine learning accelerator for matrix multiplication.

There's also an update to the secure enclave, which now works with a new version of Touch ID built into the iPad Air's power button, rather than a dedicated home button like older iPads.

Additionally, the iPad Air is getting a new liquid retina display, Wi-Fi 6 and USB Type-C.

Apple also announced the dual-core S6 for Apple Watch and moved the 8th Gen iPad to the A12 Bionic, which debuted in the iPhone XR, XS and XS Max.
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