The new iPad Pro (2020), shown a week ago, received an A12Z processor. A very strange decision of the company to release a tablet of this series on a processor with such a naming. Everyone was waiting for the Apple A13X – an advanced version of the “stone” that is in the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro.

The main difference between the two processors lies in the video memory cores. The A12X processor in the iPad Pro (2018) has seven, while the A12Z has eight. To understand whether this is the only difference, decided the edition of Notebook Check. Its authors turned to TechInsights, a technology copyright agency.

And then the interesting thing came to light: the A12X actually also has eight GPU cores. It’s just that one of them is disabled.

Whether there are other differences between the two processors until we can find out: the edition does not have a brand new iPad Pro to figure it out.

Why did Apple disable the kernel?

Тут можно только предполагать. Можно сказать, что Apple пожадничала. Точно так же, как жадничает NVIDIA со своими картами, построенными на чипе TU102. NVIDIA Titan RTX, например, поддерживает все 4608 ядер CUDA, а RTX 2080 Ti — только 4352, хотя физически они идентичны. Вообще, это довольно частая практика.

The second reason: Apple’s roadmap specifies that the iPad Pro should be updated every year and a half. At the same time, the A12X turned out to be very powerful – it is the most powerful mobile processor in the world. And it still has a long time for obsolescence.

Realizing that in a year and a half there would be no point in updating the iPad Pro processor, Apple turned off one of the graphics cores so that it was a reserve for the future: we are used to the fact that the new generation of devices is more powerful than the past. So the A12Z is ​​slightly more powerful than the A12X.

Buyers of the iPad Pro (2018) are happy – the new iPad is not much more powerful, which means that their tablet will be relevant for a very long time. IPad Pro (2020) buyers are also delighted – their tablet is the most powerful on the market.

Probably, such a move allowed Apple to focus on developing the A14 processor, which will receive the iPhone 12 and 12 Pro. It is assumed that it will be developed on a 5nm process technology. In addition, possibly another iPad with support for fifth generation networks will be released at the end of the year. And already he will receive the A14X processor. Or A13X – who knows what the company will call them now.

But what really motivated Apple to make this decision? I’m afraid we will never know.