As is with Apple’s launch habits, the A17 Bionic is expected to make a debut at the September 12 ‘Wonderlust’ event, where its flagship iPhone 15 series will be the center of attention. Of course, the cutting-edge silicon will not be powering all four models this year; only the more premium ‘Pro’ versions will be treated to the SoC, while the A16 Bionic will fuel the less expensive ones.
This year, we expect to see monumental differences between the two chipsets, and while we do not have any legitimate performance or power-efficiency statistics to compare at this time, here are four specification and feature differences that we believe will exist between the two.
Jump to TSMC’s 3nm (N3P vs N4P) process will enable a multitude of benefits
Apple will likely focus its attention on marketing on TSMC’s 3nm process, which has been leveraged to mass produce the A17 Bionic. As most of you know, an improved manufacturing process has positive effects on the performance and power efficiency of the chipset. However, there was a report doing the rounds that the A16 Bionic was actually a 5nm silicon that was marketed as a 4nm one, so assuming that the A17 Bionic is a ‘true’ 3nm chip, the differences between the two will be more pronounced.
TSMC’s brand-new technology’s single greatest attribute is power savings, with up to 30 percent reduced consumption compared to N5 and up to 15 percent increased performance while consuming the same amount of watts. Customers upgrading to the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max should immediately notice an uplift in their battery timings, with the A17 Bionic also being less prone to thermal throttling thanks to its improved efficiency.
The other details, such as transistor count, die size, Neural Engine core count, and other info, remain elusive, but Apple will likely ensure that everyone present for the event, in-person or through the livestream, will get to know more information.
More GPU cores than the A16 Bionic
Apple is expected to retain the number of CPU cores between the two chipsets, which is a 6-core solution that is divided into two performance cores and four power-efficiency ones. However, the A17 Bionic GPU count will be upgraded to six cores, according to a previous rumor that talked about the upcoming SoC’s specifications.
Another difference that we spotted in that rumor was the performance cores were said to operate at a frequency of 3.70GHz, making it slightly higher than the 3.46GHz speed of A16 Bionic’s performance cores. For several years, Apple has proven that a 6-core CPU outperforms its 8-core rivals in both single-core and multi-core benchmarks, so while we would love to see the company go in a different direction with additional cores, it will likely proceed with this configuration for the foreseeable future.
Higher RAM variant for the top-tier iPhone 15 models
Some rumors believe that Apple will continue to limit the RAM count on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max to 6GB while using the LPDDR5 technology as last year. However, a specifications comparison posted by TrendForce showed that the top-end models would feature 8GB RAM on the A17 Bionic’s logic board. With the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus said to ship with the A16 Bionic, it is likely that Apple will re-use the same hardware from last year to save on production costs.
Possible ray tracing support
The A16 Bionic was being tested with ray tracing by Apple’s engineers before its official launch in 2022. Unfortunately, while the team’s ambitions may have been lofty, the members ran into too many hurdles, forcing them to pull the plug on ray tracing support from last year’s chipset.
This included a massive power draw, which in turn plunged the battery life while also resulting in extreme overheating of the SoC. All of these problems would have been the summary of complaints from potentially millions of customers had the A16 Bionic shipped with official ray tracing support on the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max.
With the A17 Bionic possibly solving that problem thanks to TSMC’s next-generation 3nm process, ray tracing support is a possibility, although readers need to be warned that Apple typically takes its sweet time adopting the latest standards. The upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300 will have ray tracing support right off the bat, so it is only fair that the A17 Bionic can provide the same visual improvements from the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max.
With only a day remaining for the iPhone 15 event, we will get to know exactly what breakthroughs the A17 Bionic brings to the table. Not long after, before the new iPhones go up for pre-order, we will have performance results readied and compared, so stay tuned for more updates.
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