The A12X processor is manufactured by TSMC with a 7nm architecture, with up to 10 billion transistors. It consists of an octa-core CPU, a seven-core GPU and a neural network mechanism. The A12X can perform up to five trillion operations per second and also supports advanced machine learning. The A12Z is actually the same processor as the A12X. The only big difference is that the hidden GPU’s eighth core is enabled, that is, both the CPU and GPU are octa-core. As you might imagine, this improves graphics performance. Now we finally find out why the A12X comes with a GPU of – strange – seven cores. This is not the first time that a manufacturer has disabled a physical core, NVIDIA has enabled all 4608 CUDA cores on the Titan RTX while providing only 4352 cores on the RTX 2080 Ti, although both use TU102 GPUs. A possible explanation for Apple’s decision to disable a GPU core is that enabling hidden cores in temporary updates, such as the A12Z, prevents them from having to develop the A13X and can focus on the development of the A14X, which will be present on the iPad Pro 5G scheduled for launch in 2020. In addition, the Apple A12Z also optimizes the performance controller based on the A12X, improving the heat dissipation architecture and the CPU frequency is also expected to be higher.
