A15 Explained : Exploring the Avalanche and Blizzard!

iPhone 13 mini. iPhone 13. The 13 Pro. 13 Pro Max. iPad Mini 6th Gen. iPhone SE 3rd Gen. And now recently — the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus — that’s 7 iPhones and 1 iPad.

All of them house the A15 bionic chip Apple launched in the fall of 2021. Its been a while since Apple felt so proud of their silicon that they stuck it in 8 devices in less than 13 months. And so, lets break it down to what this 5nm chip houses within it and how much better it actually is.

The A15 carries forward the same architecture design laid down by the A14 chip launched in 2020.. Infact, the design CPU core design dates back to the A12 chip in 2018. However, not all CPUs are the same.

A15 houses a 6 Core CPU, 4 Core GPU and 16 Core Neural Engine. This design of the 6 Core CPU can be further realised as 2 Performance cores and 4 Efficiency cores with it. For A15, Apple named their Performance cores — the Avalanche while Efficiency cores are now Blizzard. This was in contrast to A14’s Firestorm and Icestorm cores. While the naming is surely fun, it indicates that these cores are different in functioning — not only to each other but also how much better they get year after year.