SkyJuice’s analysis of the A16 Bionic is meticulous, and while there’s no exact way to determine the chip area from the video clip, the latest SoC is clearly larger than the A15 Bionic. One reason for this could be the 6% increase in the number of transistors, resulting in higher production costs for the latest chipset as well. Apple’s latest chips use new performance and power-efficient cores, called Everest and Sawtooth, respectively, and the chipset is codenamed, Crete.

The performance core L2 cache on the A16 Bionic has been increased by 33% and is now 16MB compared to 12MB on the A15 Bionic. Increasing the cache size is an easy way to improve energy efficiency because the information is now in close communication with the CPU. The downside is that increasing cache size increases chip size and can increase production costs, with diminishing benefits from cache scaling.

One surprising change to the A16 Bionic chip is the reduction in system-level cache (SLC), from 32MB on the A15 Bionic chip to 24MB. Apple has increased the SLC size twice as much on the A15 Bionic compared to the A14 Bionic, but the analysis does not explain why Apple made this move, though we think it may have something to do with cost, the performance and efficiency cores on the two chipsets have different layouts, with the Everest core appearing to be slightly larger than the A15 Bionic’s Avalanche.

Sawtooth’s chip area has also increased, and so has the total chip size area. one area that seems to be consistent between the A16 Bionic and A15 Bionic is not just the total number of GPU cores, which is five, but their respective sizes. This is surprising because Apple’s latest SoCs for the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max offer significant graphics performance gains, with earlier tests showing a 28 percent increase compared to the A15 Bionic GPU.

The new performance and efficiency cores did not improve as much, gaining only a 14 percent performance boost in multi-core tests. In some ways, the A16 Bionic shares similarities with its predecessor, which could mean the only way to see some comparable differences are when Apple’s 3nm chipset starts arriving, which will likely be next year and is expected to be dedicated to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Rumors say that this 3nm SoC will be called the A17 Bionic, but it’s possible that Apple will use the same technology for the M2 Pro and M2 Max, providing arithmetic power for the updated MacBook Pro models in the fourth quarter of 2022.

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According to ShrimpApplePro’s updated benchmark scores, he wrote “iPhone 14 Plus vs iPhone 13 Pro Max” in his tweet. Both models should use the A15 Bionic chip, so the single-core and multi-core scores should be similar, but in fact the difference between the two benchmarks is quite large.

Shown as “iPhone 15,2” in the tweet screenshot, this should be the iPhone 14 Pro, powered by the latest A16 Bionic chip. The machine’s single-core score is 1887, and the multi-core score is 5455. The previous multi-core score of the iPhone 13 Pro Max was 4790 points.

When Apple officially announced its latest SoC, the company emphasized its focus on power efficiency, but we know somewhere that performance is expected to improve as the latest custom silicon is mass-produced on TSMC’s 4nm architecture. With the latest results, the A16 Bionic not only easily beats the A15 Bionic, but also gains an even bigger lead and bragging rights in the smartphone SoC performance charts.

The iPhone 14 Pro runtime scores revealed yesterday

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In terms of chips, as Apple’s exclusive A series chip foundry TSMC for many years, is promoting the 3nm process in the second half of mass production, the outside world is also concerned about whether the A16 chip will use this advanced process technology.

But from the latest reports of foreign media, the iPhone 14 Pro series will be equipped with the A16 chip, no TSMC 3nm process.

The foreign media is reporting that TSMC’s Arizona plant has topped out, mentioning that the A16 chip does not have access to TSMC’s 3nm process. In the report, they said that the A16 chip will continue to be handed over to TSMC using the 5nm process, Apple’s subsequent M series chips will be the first to use the 3nm process.

Apple is still a major customer of TSMC’s 5nm process, Apple’s M2 chip launched at the Global Developers Conference in June, is the second generation of TSMC’s 5nm process.

Although the foreign media in the latest report, did not explicitly point out, there were previous reports, has mentioned Apple A16 chip will use TSMC’s 4nm process foundry, they have chartered TSMC 12-15 million pieces of 4nm process capacity for foundry A16.

And it’s worth noting that in the previous earnings analyst call, TSMC CEO Wei Zhejia also mentioned that the 4nm process will leverage their strong 5nm process base to further expand their 5nm process family.

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In a report by TrendForce, it was mentioned that “unlike the previous offerings, only the latest processors are employed in the Pro Series of the iPhone 14”. When it comes to the iPhone 13 series, the iPhone 13 and the iPhone 13 Mini used the A15 Bionic chip paired with 4GB of RAM and a four-core GPU. On the other hand, the Pro models were also powered by the A15 Bionic chip but paired with 6GB of RAM  and a five-core GPU. This year’s iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Max will reportedly have the same chip but with increased RAM and enhanced GPU power. 

Now, the reason behind this sort of chip structure with the new iPhone series is probably due to the industry-wide supply chain shortage. Hence, Apple will not be able to provide the same upgraded chip to the lower iPhone 14 models. So, Apple is putting the latest A16 Bionic chip in the expensive Pro models. 

Still, whatever the reason is, Two of the iPhones will still be using the older A15 chip. However, the A15 chips are not bad chips. They have the power to compete with the latest processors. So, it is not the deal-breaker as it may sound like one. 

Source

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The TSMC 4nm fabrication process is simply the 5nm process, just with little adjustments. So using the 4nm process on the A16 bionic might make no sense. But, using a “new chip” that is very similar to the previous generation on the iPhone 14 Pro series sounds uncanny.

As we already know, only the Pro models will make use of the Apple A16 Bionic chips. The non-Pro models will make use of last year’s A15 Bionic chips. The new chips will only feature slight changes to CPU and GPU performance. For storage, its LPDDR5 RAM will also be better than that on last year’s processors. Does this give the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 a chance to shine?

The same processor repetition will reflect on this year’s MacBook Air. The coming laptop that’ll be unveiled along with the iPhone 14 series will make use of the M1 processor. We will have to wait until next year for new generation processors. Then we begin to see processors that feature actual improvements. 

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