Apple, as a rule, does not disclose all of the features of its mobile products, so it is necessary to take into their own hands to independent researchers. In addition to evaluating the maintainability of the portal iFixit inside the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus looked specialists site Chipworks, studied the new processor Apple A8. A little later, the crystal will find its application in the updated iPad Air and iPad mini third generation.
A8 processor is made by the Taiwanese company TSMC 20 nm process, while the last A7 chip on 28nm process technology produced Samsung. This is the first time the chip for Apple produces not a South Korean company, although rumors about Apple plans to reduce dependence on its main competitor in the mobile market went for a long time.
However, this dependence has not yet been removed completely, and approximately 40% of the processors, according to informed sources, continues to produce Samsung. Due to the transition to more advanced process technology was able to increase the number of transistors to 2 billion. Chip area of 89 mm ², which is 13% less than the A7 (102 mm ²)
2-core processor, so Apple is in no hurry to get into the race increasing the number of cores, as do Android-makers. Used kernels are derived from the first 64-bit processor architecture Apple Cyclone ARMv8. L2 cache reorganized to work with each nucleus separately for CPU and GPU have a shared cache memory such as SRAM volume of 4 MB.
Graphics chip is a 4-core Imagination Technologies GX6450, which provides in comparison with A7 productivity growth by 50%. Most noticeable in the 64-bit games and applications. Also compared to the A7 takes less CPU throttling under heavy load.