The Apple A12Z Bionic is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the iPad Pro 11 and 12.5-inch from 2020. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power efficiency cores (up from the 6 cores in the A12 of the iPhone XS). The difference to the older Apple A12X Bionic in the iPad Pro 2018 models seems to be an additional GPU core. Regarding CPU Apple noted: "Enhanced thermal design means higher peak and longer sustained performance". More details were not published by Apple, so it may be even the same chip with an additional enabled GPU core. On the other hand, it could be also manufactured in an improved 7nm (EUV?) process and offer higher clock rates. As Apple states no performance improvements on the CPU side, we don't expect big gains. However, the A12X was a very fast ARM based SoC and currently there is no competitor in the Android space that should beat the performance.
The chip also includes the M12 Motion co-processor and a Neural Engine with 8 cores for up to 5 trillion operations per second (unverified, numbers from the A12X).
The Apple A12X included 10 billion transistors (A12 6.9 billion) and the A12Z should be therefore offer a similar amount. This makes it a quite big chip, especially compared to the Snapdragon 835 (3 Billion) or a Skylake desktop quad-core SoC (1.75 Billion).
Apple A12X Bionic
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The Apple A12X Bionic is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the iPad Pro 11 and 12.5-inch from 2018. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power efficiency cores (up from the 6 cores in the A12 of the iPhone XS). Compared to the previous A10X in the old iPad Pro models, Apple advertises up to 95% higher performance of the CPU cores.
The chip also includes a new GPU with 7 cores, the M12 Motion co-processor and a Neural Engine with 8 cores for up to 5 trillion operations per second.
With 10 billion transistors (A12 6.9 billion), the A12X Bionic is a big chip especially compared to the Snapdragon 835 (3 Billion) or a Skylake desktop quad-core Soc (1.75 Billion).
PassMark PerformanceTest Mobile V1 - PerformanceTest Mobile V1 CPU Tests100% 1 A12X Bionic +min: 756889 avg: 758432 median: 758432 (100%) max: 759975 Points
Model
CPU
GPU
RAM
Value
Apple iPad Pro 11 2018
A12X Bionic
A12X Bionic GPU
4 GB
756889
Apple iPad Pro 12.9 2018
A12X Bionic
A12X Bionic GPU
4 GB
759975
Power Consumption - Geekbench 5.5 Power Consumption 150cd *100% 1 A12X Bionic +8.5 Watt (4%)
Model
CPU
GPU
RAM
Value
Apple iPad Pro 11 2018 MBAir M1 Adapter
A12X Bionic
A12X Bionic GPU
4 GB
8.51
Power Consumption - Idle Power Consumption 150cd 1min *100% 1 A12X Bionic +2.2 Watt (2%)
Model
CPU
GPU
RAM
Value
Apple iPad Pro 11 2018 MBAir M1 Adapter
A12X Bionic
A12X Bionic GPU
4 GB
2.15
Average Benchmarks Apple A12Z Bionic → 100% n=14
Average Benchmarks Apple A12X Bionic → 100% n=14
- Range of benchmark values for this graphics card - Average benchmark values for this graphics card* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
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- Average benchmark values for this graphics card* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
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