Apple A15 Bionic vs Apple A12 Bionic
Apple A15 Bionic
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The Apple A15 Bionic is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the iPhone 13 and iPad Mini (2021) models. It was announced late 2021 and offers 6 cores divided in 2 performance cores and four power efficiency cores. The CPU performance increases only slightly compared to the A14, but GPU (in the higher end models) offers higher gains.
The chip is manufactured in 5nm and integrates 15.8 billion transistors (compared to the 11.8 of the A14).
Apple A12 Bionic
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The Apple A12 Bionic is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the iPhone Xs and Xr. It was announced late 2018 and offers 6 cores divided in 2 performance cores and four power efficiency cores. Compared to the previous A11 Bionic, the A12 should offer a 15% improved CPU performance for the performance cores and a 50% lower power consumption for the efficiency cores (both according to Apple).
The chip also includes a new GPU that is advertised as 50% faster, the M12 Motion co-processor and a Neural Engine with 8 cores for up to 5 trillion operations per second.
With 6.9 billion transistors, the A12 Bionic is a big chip especially compared to the Snapdragon 835 (3 Billion) or a Skylake desktop quad-core Soc (1.75 Billion). Compared to the A11, the A12 integrates 60% more transistors.
Model | Apple A15 Bionic | Apple A12 Bionic | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Series | Apple Apple A-Series | Apple Apple A-Series | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Series: Apple A-Series |
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Clock | 2020 - 3230 MHz | <=2490 MHz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
L2 Cache | 16 MB | 8 MB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
L3 Cache | 32 MB | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cores / Threads | 6 / 6 | 6 / 6 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Transistors | 15800 Million | 6900 Million | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Technology | 5 nm | 7 nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Features | ARMv8 Instruction Set, Machine Learning Controller, 16-Core Neural Engine, Secure Enclave, Advanced Image Signal Processor | ARMv8 Instruction Set | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
iGPU | Apple A15 GPU 5-Core | Apple A12 Bionic GPU | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Architecture | ARM | ARM | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Announced | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
L1 Cache | 256 KB |
Benchmarks
Average Benchmarks Apple A15 Bionic → 100% n=10
Average Benchmarks Apple A12 Bionic → 542% n=10

* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance
1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation