The Apple A13 Bionic is a 64-bit ARM-based system on a chip (SoC), designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series.[2] It appears in the iPhone 11, 11 Pro/Pro Max, the iPad (9th generation),[3] the iPhone SE (2nd generation)[4] and the Studio Display.[5] Apple states that the two high performance cores are 20% faster with 30% lower power consumption than the Apple A12's, and the four high efficiency cores are 20% faster with 30% lower power consumption than the A12's.[6]

Apple A13 Bionic
General information
LaunchedSeptember 10, 2019
Designed byApple Inc.
Common manufacturer
Max. CPU clock rateto 2.65 GHz 
Cache
L2 cache8 MB (performance cores)
4 MB (efficient cores)
Last level cache16 MB (system cache)
Architecture and classification
ApplicationMobile
Technology node7 nm+ (N7P)
Microarchitecture"Lightning" and "Thunder"
Instruction setA64 ARMv8.4-A[1]
Physical specifications
Transistors
  • 8.5 billion
Cores
GPUApple-designed 4 core
Products, models, variants
Variant
History
PredecessorsApple A12 Bionic (iPhone)
Apple A12X/A12Z Bionic (iPad)
SuccessorApple A14 Bionic

Design

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The Apple A13 Bionic features an Apple-designed 64-bit six-core CPU implementing ARMv8.4-A[1] ISA, with two high-performance cores running at 2.65 GHz[7] called Lightning and four energy-efficient cores called Thunder. The Lightning cores feature machine learning accelerators called AMX blocks. Apple claims the AMX blocks are six times faster at matrix multiplication than the Apple A12's Vortex cores. The AMX blocks are capable of up to one trillion single-precision operations per second.[7] The Lightning cores have access to 8 MB pL2 and the Thunder cores share 4 MB L2. The SLC is 16 MB.[8]

The A13 integrates an Apple-designed four-core graphics processing unit (GPU) with 20% faster graphics performance and 40% lower power consumption than the A12's. Apple claims their A13's eight-core Neural Engine dedicated neural network hardware is 20% faster and consumes 15% less power than the A12's.[3][7][9]

It is manufactured by TSMC on their 2nd generation 7 nm N7P (not to be confused with '7 nm+' or 'N7+'),[10] and contains 8.5 billion transistors.[11][12]

The A13 has video codec encoding support for HEVC and H.264. It has decoding support for HEVC, H.264, MPEG‑4 Part 2, and Motion JPEG.[13]

Die block comparison (mm²)[14]
SoC A13 (7 nm enhanced) A12 (7 nm)
Process node TSMC N7P TSMC N7
Total die 98.48 83.27
Big core 2.61 2.07
Small core 0.58 0.43
CPU complex (incl. cores) 13.47 11.16
GPU core 3.25 3.23
GPU total 15.28 14.88
NPU 4.64 5.79

Products that include the Apple A13 Bionic

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Apple A13 SoC on iPhone 11 (upper) main logic board

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b "llvm-project/AArch64.td at llvm/master · llvm/llvm-project · GitHub". GitHub. Archived from the original on September 22, 2022. Retrieved January 21, 2021.
  2. ^ Hollister, Sean (September 10, 2019). "Apple says its new A13 Bionic chip has the fastest smartphone CPU and GPU ever". The Verge. Archived from the original on October 8, 2020. Retrieved September 10, 2019.
  3. ^ a b "Apple announces A13 Bionic chip for iPhone 11". VentureBeat. September 10, 2019. Archived from the original on October 3, 2020. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
  4. ^ "iPhone SE - Technical Specifications". Apple. Archived from the original on April 15, 2020. Retrieved April 15, 2020.
  5. ^ Mayo, Benjamin (March 8, 2022). "Apple announces new $1599 27-inch 5K Apple Studio Display, featuring Center Stage webcam". 9to5Mac. Retrieved March 8, 2022.
  6. ^ Dillet, Romain (September 10, 2019). "Apple introduces the A13 Bionic for the iPhone 11". TechCrunch. Retrieved March 16, 2024.
  7. ^ a b c Frumusanu, Andrei. "Apple Announces New iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, & iPhone 11 Pro Max". AnandTech. Archived from the original on September 23, 2019. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
  8. ^ Frumusanu, Andrei. "The Apple iPhone 11, 11 Pro & 11 Pro Max Review: Performance, Battery, & Camera Elevated". www.anandtech.com. Retrieved September 17, 2023.
  9. ^ Owen, Malcolm (September 11, 2019). "More power with less: Apple's A13 Bionic is faster and more power efficient". AppleInsider. Archived from the original on July 26, 2020. Retrieved September 23, 2019.
  10. ^ Frumusanu, Andrei. "The Apple iPhone 11, 11 Pro & 11 Pro Max Review: Performance, Battery, & Camera Elevated". www.anandtech.com. Archived from the original on September 6, 2020. Retrieved October 20, 2019.
  11. ^ Zafar, Ramish (September 10, 2019). "Apple A13 For iPhone 11 Has 8.5 Billion Transistors, Quad-Core GPU". Wccftech. Archived from the original on October 14, 2020. Retrieved September 11, 2019.
  12. ^ Introducing iPhone 11 Pro — Apple Youtube Video, archived from the original on October 15, 2020, retrieved September 11, 2019
  13. ^ "iPhone 11 - Technical Specifications". support.apple.com. Retrieved October 24, 2021.
  14. ^ Frumusanu, Andrei. "The Apple A13 SoC: Lightning & Thunder". AnandTech. Archived from the original on October 20, 2019. Retrieved October 16, 2019.
Preceded by Apple A13 Bionic
2019
Succeeded by