Apple Watch Series 9 to Feature Updated Processor Based on A15 Chip

[5786735]

The standard Watch is claiming around ~18h of battery life under normal use and charging times of ~45 minutes to 80% and ~75 minutes to 100%.

If an upgraded chip can bring some power efficiency improvements that could bring these numbers closer to 24h, 30 minutes and 60 minutes it makes full-day use (including sleep time and with limited charge times) more feasible.

Even better if they can turn on more sensors full-time (e.g., both heart sensors) like when they switched to an always-on altimeter.

Apple wants to make this a device you can wear as much as possible to enable more expansive health-tracking functionality. This would help.

Of course, you'll likely also see some speed improvements. That's fine but not the most critical.

 

[smwl]

Deleted

 

[patent10021]

Only A15? Meh. Still gimped. 'Time' to start treating the Watch as a first-class citizen.

 

[theorist9]

How is this important? And I mean that question 100% seriously. I have a series 8 watch. If it were 500% faster, how would that be noticeable to me? When I check a notification or a run distance or something else, would I see a difference between 5ms and 1ms?

The smaller node process could be used to reduce power consumption or increase speed, or some combination of the two.

 

[theorist9]

A15 suggests N5P rather than N4P (A16). N4P could give an even better combo of performance and battery life. This sugests Apple has a slower development cycle for the Watch than for the iPhone or the Macs. Maybe Apple decided that cutting-edge processes aren't needed for the Watch.

 

[satchmo]

I hope this gets us to Garmin-like battery times.

 

[deconstruct60]

Umm, they won’t be putting a full A15 in the Apple Watch. Most likely it will be a dual core chip based on the little (efficiency) cores of the A15 (the A15 is a 6 core chip with 2 big cores, and 4 little cores). It will also have a significantly cut down GPU and lack several other A15 components that aren’t needed for a watch (or HomePod) chip such as the ISP and neural engine.

Errr, the entire interface of the HomePod is centered on voice recognition ( i.e, doing AI/ML inference). They could use it. Similarly, there are inference workloads with the watch. They want to do blood glucose analysis plus a laundry list of other health inferences from the sensor data .. again a AI/ML problem. IF the NPU cores can do the inferencing more efficiently than the CPU/GPU cores can then that would be a net saving in battery power ( which is an outstanding issue on the watch.).

Could they press AMX (in the E core cluster) or the GPU cores to do the inference work. Possibly if pressed on space But if the keep the core count the same ( both CPU and GPU cores) and go from N7 to N5 the should be getting some die space back.

But could drop from the 16 core NPU from the A15 down 2 or 4 and still get decent inference FLOPs out of them akin to what the A12 (or A11 had). ( if chopping down E cores from the A15 to fit , then a bigger chop on NPU could work also as long as more battery efficient on some relatively common workloads. The bulk of Siri is local now. )

The ISP is in a somewhat similar boat. The watch camera isn't for taking selfies, but your pulse and skin (and layers under) are being read by what? (not the same camera sensor but it is a camera sensor). Do they need ProRes de/encoding no?

New features are nice but it’s not really reasonable to expect big headline new features every year in what is now a mature product line. Apple is no doubt working on features like blood glucose monitoring and blood pressure measurement, but it will probably be a few years before they are ready for prime time.

Even some of their stuff that is in 'prime time' ... pulse ox ( through broad range of skin) , trends, Siri ... they need work also even if these other add-ons don't arrive this year.

 

[deconstruct60]

This is so they can divert the left over dies to other Lower end things,

No. The watch dies are physically different from the mainstream A-series dies.

This is so Apple can take 'paid for' die building blocks... like A15 era E core clusters and GPU closters and relatively inexpensively tweak them to have smaller core counts and a smaller overall die size. Take a bunch of already working subcomponents of a die and recombine them into a new, smaller (cheaper to fab/'print' ) die. It is at this point a mulitple year old fab tech so yields are relatively very high. So they will get more working dies per wafer than they would for an A15. ( again cheaper unit costs).

The current low , entry level iPad is on an A13. The A15 'hand me down' process to lower things has plenty of other options to target. ( even the 10th gen iPad is on A14. )

they also need the battery life bump and the only way to get that is to upgrade the NM and then down clock it some.

Depends upon how bursty the Apple Watch software is. 'Race to sleep' can actually save power. If the user is actively interacting with the screen for long periods of time then that drain on the battery won't go do much at all. Where better fab process also more likely to help is in the radios ( again of being leaned on heavily on a long term runtime basis ) that is also a power drain.

They will offer similar performance with now 30% longer battery life with a boost ability to load apps faster. This change will not be mind blowing, they have no need. This will however give the ultra even longer hyper battery life which is what every one wants in the gen2 .

Doubtful going to get hyper battery life unless something major is done with the screen. Incredibly better battery life didn't really come in the shift from 10nm to 7nm. Not sure why there would be a bigger 'miracle occurs here' on 7nm to 5nm. The sensors are still on, the radios , and screen all consume power also independent of the CPU/GPU cores.

 

[Apple_Robert]

If Apple doesn't release the Ultra 2, I will be content to get the series 9. I think we will see a very small spec bump.

 

[JM]

Sweet! Might be time to upgrade from my Series 6. Then again, I could probably get another two years out of it with a new battery...

Same boat.

I want 45mm, but really want the buy to be worth it. Like some new software offering. Something useful.

 

[flofixer]

New chip but no new design, just like S3 and S6. Only the S4 has ever gotten both at the same time. It was the biggest upgrade year-over-year thus far.

To me, the biggest yearly upgrade was from S6 to S7. The bigger display and smaller bezel at the same time was a huge improvement in terms of visualization.

 

[Andres Cantu]

To me, the biggest yearly upgrade was from S6 to S7. The bigger display and smaller bezel at the same time was a huge improvement in terms of visualization.

The larger display due to the smaller bezel from S6 to S7 was nice, but I went from an S1 to an S4 and the difference was even larger than that. The S4 made everything prior to it look like a prototype (kind of like the iPhone 4 did to prior iPhones).

 

[East India Company]

About time. We are basically rocking a slightly improved S4 at the moment. Apple is the master of rebranding now.

 

[t0rqx]

Hopefully some noticeable battery gain, which I doubt.

 

[t0rqx]

Jesus, why? Please, pray tell, what heavy computational work you are doing from your watch that demands the raw power of an M2?

If an M2 variant somehow got the Ultra running for 5 days of heavy use (like GPS tracking every walk to everywhere type use) then I'd be really interested but until then, what the hell do I need that much power for? Walkie-talkieing with my partner? Oh I know, spinning my latest Activity challenge at a high rotational rate. NO, double tapping to bring up my card stack to change my mind and dig out a physical card. EVEN BETTER, having MTA scanner recognize my swipe 0.0002 seconds faster than my S7 does right now.

How about running the new widgets on WatchOS 10. You will need M2 or equivalent for this. Haven't you followed the news about Stage manager?

 

[tripsync]

battery life is welcome but i dont really need anymore performance. maybe more reliable wireless connections would be great too. siri works half the time

 

[DeepIn2U]

The upcoming Apple Watch Series 9 will include a new processor based on the A15 chip that was first used in the iPhone 13 models ...

While we are expecting some notable changes to watchOS this year, the Apple Watch Series 9 will be largely similar to the Series 8. No major design updates are expected, but we will see a modest speed boost due to the new chip.

Article Link: Apple Watch Series 9 to Feature Updated Processor Based on A15 Chip

Hmmm a great new chip design and chip is VERY much welcomed, but stating this may help with Apple's proposed widget UI extension to WatchOS I fear it'll be the base for performance improvements ONLY in this function.

I doubt ANY Apple Watch user with an S4 or higher really sees their watch running any functionality (that is capable in spec of the models' hardware) slowly or any perceived fluidity in speed of significance.

Here we go! Finally a new chip.

Indeed! I loathed that this spread to the iPhone 14 regular (using an previous models' chip). To be more battery efficient of any significance is what ALL users will have an incentive to upgrade to!

 

[svish]

Good to to see a processor upgrade finally on the Apple watch

 

[East India Company]

I don't know if there's any history on the watch side, but in software counts start at zero

There is history actually: the first model was simply called the Apple Watch. Then 1.5 year later there were two models that replaced it called series 1 and series 2 with the series 2 having the better performing chip with GPS. The next year it was only series 3.
Hence retrospectively people started calling the first model the series 0 although this was never what apple called it.

 

[Xand&Roby]

Well then they’re all the same - S0 to Ultra - if you ignore the differences.

S4 was based on the A12. S6 based on the A13.

Sure, and the difference between the two is that the A12 was at 2.49 Ghz and the A13 at 2.65 Ghz. These are incremental evolutions of the same cpu, there are more differences between S4 and S3 (and between S3 and S0) than between S5 and S8 (I don't put the Ultra in the middle because in a discussion about cpu the diagonal of the screen would surely come out..).
Interestingly, the A12 was decommissioned 6 months ago, October 2022, 5 years after its presentation.

and the s8 is faster than the s6, I know because I've just upgraded, the battery seems to lasts a little longer as well....so it can't be the same processor.
That's on top of a larger face, smaller bezels, keyboard and fast charging, if you get the stainless steel version
People should stop being so heavily influenced by YouTubers

But which YouTubers? I've been an Apple customer for decades, I know the company and the customers..

 

[ItsASpider]

How is this important? And I mean that question 100% seriously. I have a series 8 watch. If it were 500% faster, how would that be noticeable to me? When I check a notification or a run distance or something else, would I see a difference between 5ms and 1ms?

It's not about speed. It's about efficieny improvements, and the Apple Watch sourly needs them. Battery life has been abysmal since the start, it has dangles at the bottom of every chart that compares battery life of smart watches, both cheaper and more expensive. So if this new chip brings improvements in that area, I'd argue it is definitely worth it.

 

[Smartwatchlover]

To me the new chip means two things:

- lower power consumption—> longer battery life
- longevity -> if you buy an AW when a new chip is released, you can keep it for the next couple of years with no fear of loosing any major update

Currently owner of an AW6 and looking for an AW Ultra with the new chip.

 

[Dammit Cubs]

very interesting. never had I thought once that my Apple Watch Ultra was underpowered. It would have to blow me away to upgrade this year. I don't know how you are going to get as efficient but I really want to see because your display, small battery and active health tracking items seems to the main culprit.

low power already shows that you can stretch a apple watch longer but it requires turning off a lot of items. I could see Apple adding more features and a more efficient chip is only designed to offset those new features.

 

[chucker23n1]

I wouldn’t hold my breath on another chip update next year, considering they used a chip based on the 7 nm A13 for 3 years.

Yeah. They clearly don't see a need to upgrade the Watch CPU more frequently than once in a blue moon. (I'm not saying SoP because some of the other components on the package do get upgraded.)

I wonder if we'll generally see a slow-down where the Watch only gets an upgrade every other year. The iterative improvements are small enough that having a keynote segment for them seems silly.

 

[chucker23n1]

very interesting. never had I thought once that my Apple Watch Ultra was underpowered.

They may not even mention the chip change, or only have it on one of their slides with lots of squares. "37% faster" or whatever. I don't see them making a big deal out of it; people don't buy Apple Watches for specs.