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Here's why the iPad Pro's processor is so fast
Whatever you think of Apple's products, there's little doubt that the A9X processor in the iPad Pro is quick -- in a few cases, it rivals the performance you'd get from a laptop. But why is it so quick, especially when Apple tends to shy away from high clock speeds, many-core processors and other conventional performance tricks? Thanks to AnandTech and Chipworks, we now have a good idea. They've torn down the A9X to reveal that the chip is a series of calculated tradeoffs. It only has two CPU cores and doesn't even have Level 3 memory cache to keep the processor humming, but it has a monstrous amount of bandwidth (51GB per second) and a whopping 12 graphics cores. That's twice as many as in the iPhone 6s' A9 chip, folks. To boot, the A9X is larger than Intel's latest quad-core desktop processors -- Apple has the headroom for components that you don't see in many PCs.
Apple unveils speedy A9 and A9X processors
New iOS devices usually mean new processors, and sure enough, Apple has taken the wraps off of some fresh silicon. The A9X in the iPad Pro is a doozy, packing up to 80 percent better performance than the A8X from the iPad Air 2. It's a champ beyond raw computational power, too, with twice the graphics and storage performance as well as double the memory bandwidth. Supposedly, the A9X is more powerful than 80 percent of portable PCs released in the past year -- that's a bold claim that we'll want to verify for ourselves, but it's certainly promising.
