Apple A14

The Apple A14 Bionic is a 64-bit ARMv8.4-A^[6] system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series. It appears in the iPad Air (4th generation) and iPad (10th generation), as well as iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. Apple states that the central processing unit (CPU) performs up to 40% faster than the A12, while the graphics processing unit (GPU) is up to 30% faster than the A12. It also includes a 16-core neural engine and new machine learning matrix accelerators that perform twice and ten times as fast, respectively.^[7][8]

Apple A14 Bionic

General information
Launched	September 15, 2020
Discontinued	March 4, 2025
Designed by	Apple Inc.
Common manufacturer	TSMC
Product code	APL1W01[1]
Max. CPU clock rate	to 3.0 GHz[2]
Cache
L2 cache	8 MB (performance cores) 4 MB (efficient cores)
L4 cache	16 MB (system cache) [3]
Architecture and classification
Application	Mobile
Technology node	5 nm (N5)
Microarchitecture	"Firestorm" and "Icestorm"[4][5]
Instruction set	ARMv8.4-A[6]
Physical specifications
Transistors	11.8 billion
Cores	6 (ARM big.LITTLE: 2 "big" Firestorm + 4 "little" Icestorm)
GPU	Apple-designed 4 core
Products, models, variants
Variant	Apple M1
History
Predecessor	Apple A13 Bionic
Successors	Apple A15 Bionic (iPhone) Apple A16 Bionic (iPad) Apple M1 (iPad Air)

Design

The Apple A14 Bionic features an Apple-designed 64-bit, six-core CPU, implementing ARMv8^[6] with two high-performance cores called Firestorm and four energy-efficient cores called Icestorm.^[5]

The A14 integrates an Apple-designed four-core GPU with 30% faster graphics performance than the A12.^[8] The A14 includes dedicated neural network hardware that Apple calls a new 16-core Neural Engine.^[8] The Neural Engine can perform 11 trillion operations per second.^[8] In addition to the separate Neural Engine, the A14 CPU includes second-generation machine learning matrix scalar multiplication accelerators (which Apple calls AMX blocks).^[8][9] The A14 also includes a new image processor with improved computational photography capabilities.^[10]

A14 is manufactured by TSMC on their first-generation 5 nm fabrication process, N5. This makes the A14 the first commercially available product to be manufactured on a 5 nm process node.^[11] The transistor count has increased to 11.8 billion, a 38.8% increase from the A13's transistor count of 8.5 billion.^[12][13] According to Semianalysis, the die size of A14 processor is 88 mm², with a transistor density of 134 million transistors per mm².^[14] It is manufactured in a package on package (PoP) together with 4 GB of LPDDR4X memory in the iPhone 12^[1] and 6 GB of LPDDR4X memory in the iPhone 12 Pro.^[1]

The A14 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.^[15]

The A14 would be later used as the basis for the M1 series of chips, used in various Macintosh and iPad models.

Products that include the Apple A14 Bionic

• iPad (10th generation)
• iPad Air (4th generation)
• iPhone 12 & 12 Mini
• iPhone 12 Pro & 12 Pro Max

Variants

The table below shows the various SoCs based on the "Firestorm" and "Icestorm" microarchitectures.

Variant	CPU cores (P+E)	GPU cores	GPU EU	Graphics ALU	Neural Engine cores	Neural Engine performance	Memory (GB)	Transistor count
A14	6 (2+4)	4	64	512	16	11 TOPS	4–6	11.8 billion
M1	8 (4+4)	7	112	896			8–16	16 billion
M1		8	128	1024
M1 Pro	8 (6+2)	14	224	1792			16–32	34 billion
M1 Pro	10 (8+2)
M1 Pro		16	256	2048
M1 Max	10 (8+2)	24	384	3072			32–64	57 billion
M1 Max		32	512	4096
M1 Ultra	20 (16+4)	48	768	6144	32	22 TOPS	64–128	114 billion
M1 Ultra		64	1024	8192

See also

• Apple silicon
• Apple M1
• Comparison of Armv8-A processors
• GoFetch – security vulnerability within the Apple M2 first disclosed in 2024