Apple's A9: Story Within A Story

Paul Boldt
EETimes (11/12/2015 01:34 PM EST)

On a basic level it's a story of a sixth generation application processor that is fabricated in a FinFET process. It's also a bigger story of Apple's semiconductor design ambitions.

Here we are. It is the sixth generation of Apple’s A-series Application Processor family: the A9.

The first generation A4 appeared in 2010. It was found to have considerable commonality with a comparable Samsung processor. Moving forward, the A6 showed us a custom Apple-designed CPU. This was, and still is, seen as no small feat.

The next-generation A7 moved the family into 64-bit computing. The A7 showed some interesting design decisions as there was no A7X. With the A7 Apple designed a single processor for the iPad Air and iPhone 5s even though these devices had a 4x difference in pixel counts. Further, the iPhone 5s now came with TouchID while the iPad Air did not.

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