The Apple A6 is said to use a 1.3 GHz[3] custom[9] Apple-designed ARMv7-A architecture based dual-core CPU, called Swift,[4] rather than a licensed CPU from ARM like in previous designs, and an integrated 266 MHz triple-core PowerVR SGX543MP3[7] graphics processing unit (GPU).

The Swift core in the A6 uses a new tweaked instruction set featuring some elements of the ARM Cortex-A15 such as support for the Advanced SIMD v2, and VFPv4.

[10] The A6 includes an upgraded image signal processor (ISP), that compared with the ISP in the A5, improves the speed of image capture, low-light performance, noise reduction, and video stabilization.

[11] The A6 is manufactured by Samsung on a high-κ metal gate (HKMG) 32 nm process and the chip is 96.71 mm2 large,[5][2] which is 22% smaller than the A5.

[12] A version of the A6 with higher frequency and four graphic cores is called Apple A6X and is found only in the fourth generation iPad.