The Apple A6 (2012) marked a major milestone—Apple’s first in-house designed CPU core, moving away from ARM’s stock Cortex designs.
Key Features:
- CPU: 2-core “Swift” (Apple’s first custom ARMv7 architecture)
- ~2x faster than A5, despite same core count
- Clock speed: 1.3GHz (iPhone 5)
- GPU: PowerVR SGX 543MP3 (tri-core, ~3x faster than A5)
- Process: 32nm (same as revised A5, but more efficient)
- RAM: 1GB LPDDR2 (first iPhone with 1GB)
- Devices: iPhone 5, iPhone 5C, iPod Touch (6th Gen)
Why it mattered:
✅ First “designed by Apple” CPU (set stage for A7’s 64-bit leap)
✅ Much faster single-core performance than A5
✅ iPhone 5’s thin design relied on A6 efficiency