‘A12Z-soc of the new iPad Pro looks like an A12X with extra activated GPU core’

The A12Z Bionic soc of the newly announced iPad Pro appears to be physically the same chip as the A12X of the 2018 iPad Pro, but Apple has activated a GPU core that is disabled with the A12X. That is what Notebookcheck claims after an analysis.

Notebookcheck relies on a report from TechInsights, which confirms that the A12X has eight physical cores. TechInsights is a company that focuses on providing insight into chips. The company reports that it is in the process of comparing the layout of the A12Z with that of the A12X. Differences could therefore emerge from this analysis.

Based on Geekbench scores, Ars Technica, among others, already found that the CPU performance of the A12Z of the iPad Pro of 2020 announced last week was no higher than that of the A12X of the iPad Pro of 2018. The GPU scores did fall. slightly higher. Apple probably deactivated the eighth GPU core of the A12X to be able to produce more working copies of the soc and production has now been optimized.

It would be striking if Apple did not provide its iPad Pro with a newly designed soc, which the company did with previous new versions of the tablet. According to 9to5mac, there are indications that Apple will make new announcements for the iPad Pro in the fall and the site speculates that an A14X could then appear.