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A Closer Look at Apple's A7 Chip from the iPhone 5s

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Earlier this week, Canadian firm Chipworks released some photos showing the interior of Apple's new A7 chip from the iPhone 5s, as well as the new M7 "motion coprocessor" and other components.

The firm has now had a chance to look at the A7's transistor die photo in detail and make a preliminary effort at identifying the various components of the chip. Chipworks stresses that the identifications are still tentative pending full circuit analysis, but that most of the identifications appear to make sense.
We publish this with the caveat that these are best guesses - we have not done any real circuit extraction to confirm them. The dual-core CPU and cache make up ~17% of the die area, and the quad-core GPU and shared logic about 22%. The CPU itself is not packed the same way as the A6 (see below), it looks much more like a conventional automated layout; although Linley Gwennap thinks that it's still Apple designed, not the first ARM A53/57 usage.
Click to expand...
chipworks_a7_floorplan.jpg
The analysis identifies the CPU portion of the chip as being at the lower left of the image, with the quad-core graphics located at lower right. Previous work by AnandTech has identified the graphics as Imagination Technologies' PowerVR G6430 configuration, a member of the new "Rogue" series of GPUs from the company.

Also of interest is a large block of static RAM (SRAM) located along the right edge of the chip just above the graphics cores. Chipworks says that based on its size it represents approximately 3 MB of storage and that it could be the "secure enclave" used to house data associated with the Touch ID fingerprint sensor found on the iPhone 5s. No equivalent SRAM block is included on the previous-generation A6 chip from Apple.

The A7 is otherwise a fairly standard chip compared to Apple's previous designs, measuring only slightly larger than the A6 but offering significantly greater performance.

Article Link: A Closer Look at Apple's A7 Chip from the iPhone 5s
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/09/27/a-closer-look-at-apples-a7-chip-from-the-iphone-5s/
chrmjenkins

chrmjenkins

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Oct 29, 2007
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SRAM block may be for image processing as well, given the high speed camera analytics. Could also be (more likely) associated with the GPU frame buffer compression logic.
 
keysofanxiety

keysofanxiety

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Nov 23, 2011
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People talk about Apple's lack of innovation, and yet Apple's A7 is one of the most innovative pieces of hardware available on a phone today. Amazing to think Apple designed this thing. Designing your own chip hardware means you're not at the mercy of another company's pipeline.

This is the start of something great.
 
iapplelove

iapplelove

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let's face it, apple has smart phone/mobile computer processing on lock down. they at least get that right, some amazing stuff right there.
 
iGrip

iGrip

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The A7 is pretty amazing.

Back in the day, it seemed like desktop processors were getting to the point of being "fast enough". They had ceased being the defining component of the computer, and had been relegated to the status of other stuff like RAM and video subsystems.

But the progress being made in low-power CPUs and SOCs is truly amazing. It seems light years ahead of say, an old-school Pentium chip.

64 bit multicore SOCs with special purpose auxiliary CPUs are something that would have been science fiction in the 1980's.
 
InTheMist

InTheMist

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Jun 22, 2013
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keysofanxiety said:
People talk about Apple's lack of innovation, and yet Apple's A7 is one of the most innovative pieces of hardware available on a phone today. Amazing to think Apple designed this thing. Designing your own chip hardware means you're not at the mercy of another company's pipeline.

This is the start of something great.
Click to expand...

Too right.

I'm a bit disconcerted about recent software foibles though.
 
F

Fission

macrumors regular
Sep 26, 2013
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I wonder if we are getting close to the point that the CPU is truly, fast enough? My iP5 is pretty fast...much more than my 4s was to the 4....

The 5s is faster, but only benchmarks truly show how much faster it is.

I wonder if the a8 will be the CPU that is fast enough?
 
S

slapppy

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Mar 20, 2008
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Samsung Design

Hold on a sec. Why is it that all over the net, people post that its really a Samsung chip that Apple just branded and added some custom additions? I don't get those guys. It's clear that Apple Designed the Chip and Samsung Chip Fab division manufactured it according to Apple Spec. Or am I making an incorrect statement here?
 
J

jonAppleSeed

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Mar 21, 2013
200
0
keysofanxiety said:
People talk about Apple's lack of innovation, and yet Apple's A7 is one of the most innovative pieces of hardware available on a phone today. Amazing to think Apple designed this thing. Designing your own chip hardware means you're not at the mercy of another company's pipeline.

This is the start of something great.
Click to expand...

The chip is an ARMv8 with a cluster of PowerVR G6430's and uses ARM's TrustZone/SecureCore technology. It's being manufactured by Samsung.


I think they are a little bit at the mercy of other companies pipelines still.
 
AngerDanger

AngerDanger

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I'll admit that it's a nice, contemporary design, but if they opened it up in the middle, it would appear to be more spacious. This would also allow for the addition of a fountain or modern sculpture. But why stop there?

tny4YGE.png
 
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L

locoboi187

macrumors 6502a
Oct 3, 2012
711
375
slapppy said:
Hold on a sec. Why is it that all over the net, people post that its really a Samsung chip that Apple just branded and added some custom additions? I don't get those guys. It's clear that Apple Designed the Chip and Samsung Chip Fab division manufactured it according to Apple Spec. Or am I making an incorrect statement here?
Click to expand...

No you're correct. It's not a Samsung chip, just manufactured by Samsung but actually designed by Apple.
 
eric_n_dfw

eric_n_dfw

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chrmjenkins said:
SRAM block may be for image processing as well, given the high speed camera analytics. Could also be (more likely) associated with the GPU frame buffer compression logic.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't think you would use static ram for that since there would be no need to keep it around when power went away.
 
iGrip

iGrip

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Jul 1, 2010
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Fission said:
I wonder if we are getting close to the point that the CPU is truly, fast enough? My iP5 is pretty fast...much more than my 4s was to the 4....

The 5s is faster, but only benchmarks truly show how much faster it is.

I wonder if the a8 will be the CPU that is fast enough?
Click to expand...

They won't be fast enough until they can do real-time voice translations into other languages so the you could, for example, understand the waiter speaking a foreign language.
 
cal6n

cal6n

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Jul 25, 2004
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Fresh Pie said:
I'll admit that it's a nice, contemporary design, but if they opened it up in the middle, it would appear to be more spacious. This would also allow for the addition of a fountain or modern sculpture.
Click to expand...

Be serious. This is Apple. Why would they clutter up their minimalist design space with a fountain?
 
iGrip

iGrip

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Jul 1, 2010
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slapppy said:
Hold on a sec. Why is it that all over the net, people post that its really a Samsung chip that Apple just branded and added some custom additions? I don't get those guys. It's clear that Apple Designed the Chip and Samsung Chip Fab division manufactured it according to Apple Spec. Or am I making an incorrect statement here?
Click to expand...

You are correct, but you may not appreciate how difficult it is to manufacture high end chips. Without Sammy's expertise, all the Apple designs in the world could not get built fast enough and cheaply enough and reliably enough.

Things are changing, but as of now, Samsung is an indispensable partner.
 
D

dojoman

macrumors 68000
Apr 8, 2010
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But then Samsung manufacturers the chip so it belongs to Samsung and they are innovative.
 
Quu

Quu

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Apr 2, 2007
3,421
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It is amazing to me how integrated Apples designs have become. Apple of a decade ago would have used an extra processor for TouchID to store that secure data. Now they are integrating 3MB of SRAM in to their own processor package to deliver that functionality.

I think in the future maybe 5 years from now they will have integrated every chip in the iPhone in to a single processor like this, maybe by the A12 all the radios and so on will be integrated in to a single chip.

I think with the A8 we'll definitely see the M7's functionality baked in to the A8 if they can keep it operating independently from the rest of the A8 processor to keep power consumption down.

This is the kind of vertical integration we aren't seeing from their competitors who are using off the shelf processors. Only Samsung is really making the chips that go in to their phones everyone else is going to another company to get their common denominator chips with very specific functionality, apple by contrast is making their own processors with a broader feature list.

I can't wait to see where this heads and what new functionality it will enable them to bundle in the same physical space.

----------
dojoman said:
But then Samsung manufacturers the chip so it belongs to Samsung and they are innovative.
Click to expand...

Samsung is to Apples Processors as TSMC is to NVIDIA. They manufacture the chips for them but they don't design them. Apple creates the chip design.
 
S

slapppy

macrumors 65816
Mar 20, 2008
1,227
42
iGrip said:
You are correct, but you may not appreciate how difficult it is to manufacture high end chips. Without Sammy's expertise, all the Apple designs in the world could not get built fast enough and cheaply enough and reliably enough.

Things are changing, but as of now, Samsung is an indispensable partner.
Click to expand...

Then its safe to say that Samsung cannot copy this chip or design for their own products?
 
H

holmesf

macrumors 6502a
Sep 30, 2001
528
25
eric_n_dfw said:
I wouldn't think you would use static ram for that since there would be no need to keep it around when power went away.
Click to expand...

SRAM doesn't mean it preserves memory contents when the power goes away -- quite the opposite. Compared to DRAM it's less dense but higher performance and is used in CPU caches, among other things.
 
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