Chipworks takes the lid off Apple's A9X SoC
by from Techreport on (#W7VK)
We've heard some pretty impressive performance claims about the A9X SoC in Apple's iPad Pro ever since the mega-slate made its public debut, and now we know a little more about the hardware that makes it all happen (even if it isn't quite surpassing x86 PCs just yet). Reverse-engineering firm Chipworks has teamed up with Anandtech to examine the guts of the A9X, and they've drawn some interesting conclusions looking at the floor plan of the 147-mm2 die.
Apple's SoCs are well-known for using two strong custom CPU cores, and the A9X doesn't depart from tradition in that regard. What is surprising is the large amount of chip area given over to graphics processing on the A9X. Anandtech believes that Apple has crammed 12 PowerVR Series7 ...