“Apple A10X soc from iPad Pro is the first processor that TSMC makes at 10nm”

The first devices with a 10nm SOC from the TSMC factories have appeared. It concerns the A10X soc from Apple in the new iPad Pro models. The A10 for the iPhone 7 was manufactured on the 14-16nm processes of Samsung and TSMC.

Partly due to the step to TSMC’s 10nm FinFet process, the A10X is 45 percent smaller than its predecessor A9X, claims TechInsights. The die size is about 96 square millimeters, compared to 146 square millimeters of the A9X.

The A10X is not the first mobile soc on 10nm. That honor went to Samsung’s Exynos 9 Octa and Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 earlier this year, both of which come from Samsung’s factories.

The GPU of the A10X seems almost unchanged compared to the A9X, claims Anandtech. However, Apple has increased the l2 cache, from 3MB in the A9X to 8MB in the A10X. As with the A9X, there is no l3 cache. The A10X has three Fusion processors with two cores each. They run at a maximum of 2.36GHz.

Apple uses the A10X in the iPad Pro models released this month. This concerns the second generation of its 12.9″ iPad and a new screen size of 10.5″. Apple will probably use the next generation of its soc in the next iPhone, which will probably be given the name A11.