Apple A12Z Bionic vs Apple A14 Bionic (Comparison Review)

You would be surprised to know that Apple used to get its processors from Intel many years back. The devices were produced with Intel chipsets. However, the maker longed for their own processors so that they could become the best in the market.

They did that by stopping using the Intel chipsets and they started producing their own chipsets. This enabled the manufacturers to produce their own products in accordance with their marketing strategy.

They succeeded immensely, and this perhaps is a leaf that other makers might want to take from Apple. They wanted their devices to be powerful and consume low power. One of the prime examples of that would be the A-series chip in the iPhone4 and onwards.

Additionally, you can see that their devices, especially the iPhone and the iPad, come with exceptional chips. As a result, they succeed in consuming less power and offer you with a spectacular performance.

Today, we will be reviewing two Apple chipsets that are produced by them in-house. They are the Apple A12Z Bionic chip vs the Apple A14 Bionic chip. The chips are designed by the Apple company and produced by TSMC.

How good is the bionic chip? Well, they are much faster, quicker, and more efficient than the other chip that is available on the market. For example, the Apple A13 Bionic has an AnTuTu benchmark score of 526466.

If you look at the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, it comes with an AnTuTu score of 435219. Besides, the Apple A13 Bionic has 6 cores 2660 MHz frequency. However, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 has 8 cores and a 2840 MHz frequency.

That itself goes to show the power of the Apple processor. The A12Z Bionic processor was effective in the market in March 2020. The chip came with the iPad Pro that was released that particular year.

It also includes the M12 Motion co-processor. You can note that it comes with a neural engine with 8 cores. The processor can work for 5 trillion operations per second. Likewise, the Apple A14 Bionic processor was released in September 2020.

It came infused with the fourth-generation iPad Air. Then a few months later, you could find the chip in the latest iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro. The A14 Bionic chip is designed & produced with the 5nm, and it integrates 11.8 billion transistors.

Let us read and find out more about the Apple Bionic chips. We have mentioned the winner at the end of the review.

APPLE A12Z BIONIC	APPLE A14 BIONIC
PROS	PROS
The model comes with a 1.59 GHz frequency. The speed of the unit is boosted up to 2.49 GHz. It comes with 8 CPU cores, 4 high-performance cores, and 4 high-efficiency cores. It has a 7-nanometer manufacturing process. The product is a variant of the 2018 A12 Bionic chip.	The model has a 1.80 GHz frequency. The speed of the unit is boosted up to 3.01 GHz. It has 6 CPU cores, 2 high-performance cores, and 4 high-efficiency cores. It provides you with a 5-nanometer manufacturing process. The product is Apple’s latest-generation 2020 processor.
CONS	CONS
Like most Apple units, it is getting slowly outdated.	The chip that is embedded in most Apple products is quite expensive.

Apple A12Z Bionic vs Apple A14 Bionic: Design & Features

The Apple A12Z Bionic chip comes with a phenomenal set of features. We will not be looking at the design aspects, only the features. An interesting part of the A12Z chip is that it was produced as a smartphone-centric processor and is now used in tablets.

You will be delighted to know that it was the first A-series chip to be used in Mac developer kits. The chip is the third in a series of A12-series chips, starting with the A12 in the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR.

It consists of a six-core GPU combining two Vortex cores with four Tempest cores. In addition, the unit also has a four-core GPU. It was introduced in the market in 2020 and is 8 core CPU 8 core GPU model.

The chip comes with a 2.49GHz clock speed and is produced with a 7nm process. It was first used in the 2020 iPad Pro and now can be found in the Mac development kits. The A12Z unit is considered as one of the best in the market because of the semiconductor size, GPU clock speed, and maximum memory amount.

It also comes with a GPU turbo, L2 cache and has more number of transistors. It is a system-on-chip that serves as a processor. That is because it handles the graphical responsibilities of the architecture and processing.

The model is a 64-bit ARM-based chip featuring 8-computing cores in LITTLE configuration. In addition, there are 4-Vortex cores, and the performance is massive from the chip as they are able to operate well and consume less power.

The maximum clock speed is of 2.49GHz. Additionally, the chip works with 128KB of L1 cache for instructions. It has 128KB for data and an 8-megabyte L2 cache. You will be delighted to know that the cache level of the chip has been unchanged since its inception.

The graphics processing comes with the ability from 8-GPU cores. Users will be glad to know that the chip gives you with the highest number on an A-series unit. Additionally, it also comes with the M12 co-processor.

That is used to process & collect sensor data. It helps in decrease of the CPU unit’s workload. You will want to know that it comes with a dedicated neural network that consists of 8 cores that can perform 5 trillion 8-bit operations/second.

The neutral engine is able to power the machine learning functions. Moreover, you can make use of the advanced features of apps. The TSMC has been a partner of Apple for many years. They have been doing an exceptional job of producing stunning processors.

A 7-nanometer process is used in the production. When you see the iPad Pro, the chip comes with the 6 gigabytes of memory that is installed on the SoC. During the release of the iPad Pro in 2020, the maker claimed that the chip came with the best performance.

It was possible due to the extra GPU and enhanced thermal architecture. At the same time, Apple increased the number of GPU cores the A12X used from four to seven cores. However, other elements of the chip’s design remained the same.

The Apple A14 Bionic chip features are amazing. They resemble the A12Z in many ways. However, it is way more powerful than anything you have seen. As you know, Apple has a reputation for providing you with top-notch processors.

It has often put the Android competitors to shame. Today, they have done the same with the A14 Bionic. It is designed using TSMC’s 5nm process. This immensely helps in enhancing the performance of the chip.

Moreover, you can expect more power efficiency from it. Although, as you know, the Android smartphones come with a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 Plus and the Snapdragon 875, the performance can be quite tight.

The A14 has the ability to generate more power than before. As a result, we see it used in most of future Apple products. The arm’s powerhouse Cortex-X1 may close the gap quickly. However, the gaming advantage is always there that enables it to look eloquent for the next generation.

Apple A12Z Bionic vs Apple A14 Bionic: Setup & Performance

In this segment, we will compare the various aspects of the chips very closely. That will help us get a better idea about the chipset.

CPU

The A12Z comes with a frequency of 1.59 GHz. However, it can turbo boost up to 2.49 GHz. In addition, the A12Z chip comes with two more CPU cores despite coming with a low frequency. That enables it to share the load on the cores and do well on multi-core tasks.

The A14 chip comes with a powerful specification. It comes with a frequency speeds of more than 1.8 GHz. However, the A14 can turbo boost up to 3.01 GHz. It simply means that the A14 can go faster than the A12Z.

But as you know, it is a maximum clock speed; both might not always be able to reach them.

GPU

The A12Z comes with more than GPU cores than its counterpart. The number of cores is eight. However, the A14 chip has more power in the graphics design. We were quite surprised to notice that the 4GPU cores did an exceptional job with the graphics designing aspect.

RAM

The 2020 iPad Pro comes with the A12Z processor with 6GB of RAM. Likewise, you can find that the fourth-generation iPad Air and iPhone 12 come with 4GB of RAM. However, it comes with a powerful 6GB of RAM in the iPhone 12 Pro.

Manufacturing

The A12Z chip is produced using the 7-nanometer process. It is quite old by now. However, the A14 chip is manufactured using the 5-nanometer fabrication process. In fact, it is the only model that comes manufactured using this process.

It helps the chip to become more densely packed with 11.8 billion transistors. The A13 2019 model comes with 8.5 billion transistors. In addition, the manufacturing process used here makes the A14 chip more modern, bringing the procedure for most others to follow suit.

You will want to know that the A14 chip provides you with 2-years’ worth of minor efficiency and design improvements. You will be glad also to know that the maker produced the end GPU core in-house.

It is almost the same as the A13 chip. You can also notice that the performance is an improvement from the clock increases and not any major architecture or core count enhancements.

The 11.8 billion transistors are a massive 30% increase from the A13 chip of 8.5 billion. These can come as improvements with the 16-core neural engine. It is used for image processing and AI workloads.

An interesting product from the stable of Apple with the A14 Bionic chip would be the iPhone 12 Pro. You will also want to know that it is the first 5G smartphone from the maker. A lot like Snapdragon 865, it does not come with an integrated 5G modem.

But they have made Qualcomm to pair it with the Snapdragon X55 4G. You can also find that it comes with the 5G dual-mode modem. It also includes mmWave and sub-6GHz support. There is also the 5G FDD, 4G/5G spectrum to support the standalone 5G networks.

The modem that can provide a speed of 7Gbps on mmWave networks works well with it. But you may get to see lower speeds than the model. However, according to some teardown experts, they notice that the maker has used a slimmer Chinese manufactured USI mmWave antenna and not Qualcomm’s QTM525 that is present on most of the Android models.

Apple A12Z Bionic vs Apple A14 Bionic: Price

The chips are not sold separately as Apple themselves manufactures them. However, you can purchase the devices that come embedded with them. The A12Z belongs to the third in a series of A12 chips.

You can find the chip produced along with iPhone XR, iPhone XS, and iPhone XS Max. The unit comes with a six-core GPU that combines two Vortex cores with four tempest cores. The device also comes with a four-core GPU.

Additionally, it can be found in the 2018 iPad Pro. On the other hand, the Apple A14 Bionic chip is a 64-bit ARMv8 designed by Apple Inc. You can find the 4-A system on a chip (SoC) in the fourth-generation iPad Air.

Not to mention, you can find the chip on the iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Mini, iPhone 12, and iPhone 12 Pro Max. So if you want to make use of the chips, then you can get yourself these models that we have mentioned above in the review.

Apple A12Z Bionic vs Apple A14 Bionic: Verdict

We have come to the end of our comparison review between the Apple A12Z Bionic chip vs Apple A14 Bionic chip. We hope that you enjoyed reading the post and were able to make your decision.

If you haven’t, then we suggest that you read the post again. You can find something that you prefer. The Apple A12Z Bionic chip is ideal for using on intense computational operations and multi-core tasks.

Though it is slower and much older, it could be the better chip if you look at the pricing. Most users would have stilled owned the devices that come with it. Since it comes with more cores, the A12Z chip has the ability to outshine the A12 chips in certain areas.

In this sense, when you have the iPad Pro, which is one of the most sought-after products from Apple. So having a chip with better multi-core performance makes sense. Besides, it also comes with a large display that enables you to perform complex multitasking using the Pro eight cores.

The Apple A14 Bionic chip is a powerful processor that is capable of doing what you exactly want it to do. Used on the latest iPad Pro, you can find that it performs exceptionally well. That is because it comes with twice the number of GPU cores.

You can make use of it when preparing workflows that require a lot of gaming, editing on the 4K video. Besides, when you are working on a single application, the A14 is extremely good. Users might want to know that the iPad Air on the A12Z did better than the one with the A14.

But the Apple A14 Bionic chip comes with several advantages compared to the A12Z Bionic chip, including a 2nm smaller semiconductor size, 210MHz faster GPU clock speed, and 5G support.

Additionally, the chip has a 510MHz faster GPU turbo speed, has an 8MB bigger L2 cache, and you can find 1800million more transistors. So our winner in this comparison review between the Apple A12Z Bionic chip vs Apple A14 Bionic chip is the A14 chip.

It is just way too advanced for the A12Z chip. Apple has always kept pushing harder each year to come out with stunning products. They have done the same with the chips as well. You need to also look at the significant improvements that have happened with the chip generations.

Besides, the benefits of using the five-nanometer fabrication process make it an all-rounder for the maker. First, however, you might want to give the A12Z a try; that is mostly found on the Apple devices sold pre-2020.