iPhone 16 to Feature First A-Series Chip Designed Specifically for Standard Models

[Lounge vibes 05]

Longing for the days of "This is iPhone"

you mean before the 3G and the 3GS and the introduction of basic features like video recording, cut copy and paste, third-party applications, multimedia messaging, and where even simple text messages interrupted literally anything you were doing with a big dialogue box you were forced to interact with?

Yeah, I think you’re probably alone on that

 

[BorisDG]

But according to TSMC published data N3E node is better than N3B in both power and efficiency.

View attachment 2280340

It is better. I said it months ago, that the N3B is DOA and now we see how bad it is actually vs N4P. If they do A17 after all I bet will be without the "ray tracing" in it, because that's the reason A17 is called Pro in a first place.

I'm thinking that next year we will have A18 and A18 Pro tho.

 

[floral]

It'd just be called A17

I suppose so... Or maybe just "A17 Bionic". Like the last 5 chips...

 

[Torty]

Respect for those who got the 15, but I’m so glad I decided to hold off.

IMO the 15 is a good buy for those who want a light phone. A16 is the latest 5nm chip which seems to be better than thought. And it got more SW features than the same SOC in 14P.

 

[BorisDG]

IMO the 15 is a good buy for those who want a light phone. A16 is the latest 5nm chip which seems to be better than thought. And it got more SW features than the same SOC in 14P.

I called that also back than. Many said A16 is just an overcloked A15, but reality it's very great SoC with few fundamental changes under the hood. At least people can see it now. (better later than never)

 

[LiE_]

Pre-gimped for your pleasure.

 

[Wildkraut]

In other words…

Cut costs by producing an inferior product, and at least remain the price, but as always increase the price with support of marketing yada yada.

 

[SAIRUS]

They’ll probably remove the usb controller at least. In theory that’s enough to say “new chip”

 

[Populus]

With 8GB of RAM, I can only think of one feature that is difference than A17 Pro, that would be USB 2.0...

Actually, I think it’s likely that this new standard SoC will come with 6GB of RAM.

 

[segfaultdotorg]

But will they have 6G?

 

[Skyscraperfan]

That is just some new Apple BS. In the past the standard and the pro model even had the same chip. Then Apple delayed the most recent chips for the standard model for a full year. So from now on, not even waiting a year will get you the same chip as last year's pro model.

 

[TigeRick]

Actually, I think it’s likely that this new standard SoC will come with 6GB of RAM.

If Apple wants to make future iPhones to play AAA gaming, then min 8GB seems way to go...especially with LPDDR5 only. A18 Pro could upgrade to LPDDR5x next year

 

[Velin]

Non-Pros: you will get slag silicon and like it!

 

[TokyoKiller]

An easy prediction given that the new chip is an A17 "Pro" so next year non-pro models will just get a paired-down version of that chip. Its mostly so that they can market it as a new chip, let's be honest here.

 

[Rogifan]

Calling it A17 makes no sense. Just call them A[number] and A[number] Pro.

 

[Adelphos33]

In many ways, I want the regular phones as they are higher, ar more likely to come in interesting colors, and do 95% f what you need from a phone. But news like this emphasizes Apple sees the regular phones as a way to sell phones in bulk to corporations (my corporate issued phone is a base 13), wireless carriers, countries where price is more of a focus, etc.

 

[chucker23n1]

So if the current A17 Pro is only about 10% faster than the A16 as of now and is actually MORE power consuming, then a slower A17 (presumed just because they said it will be cheaper) is basically merely an A16 with a new stencil on the top.

There's more to the SoC than just the CPU. The GPU is supposedly a significant design change. The neural engine is also faster, I believe.

And, even for the CPU: we don't really know yet about the e-cores. Those might be either more efficient or faster.

 

[chucker23n1]

Calling it A17 makes no sense. Just call them A[number] and A[number] Pro.

It is the non-Pro offshoot of the A17 Pro. Different process, but same cores. Same generation, just a year later.

And this isn't unprecedented. The A9X was on a different process node than the A9. But the cores were the same (just different counts). So the naming does make sense.

 

[BorisDG]

We already know. There are few YouTubers which made detailed video. There are both unimpressive.

 

[R4O8]

I bet they’ll use A18 and A18 Pro names, just like they do with their M-series silicon. The fact they added Pro moniker to A17 corroborates this, because it can’t be just A17 on the Pro models while the standard ones have a Bionic. Also, A18 (in standard iPhone 16 series) would then imply it’s a successor to A17, an improvement, but obviously won’t be since it will probably lack Ray Tracing, additional RAM and such. Lastly, I don’t believe they can improve their silicon “twice” in one year to warrant such naming scheme, which is another reason why they added Pro to the A17.

 

[chucker23n1]

I suppose so... Or maybe just "A17 Bionic". Like the last 5 chips...

My guess is they're finally done with that suffix. We all know it has a Neural Engine.

 

[4odomi]

The A17 chip designed for the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will be made using a fundamentally different manufacturing process to the A17 Pro in the iPhone 15 Pro to cut costs, according to a rumor that has now been clarified by a reliable source.

A Weibo user who claims to be an integrated circuit expert with 25 years of experience working on Intel's Pentium processors was first to float the rumor in June. Now, the same source has clarified Apple's apparent plan for its standard iPhones' chip in 2024.

The iPhone 15 Pro's A17 Pro chip is fabricated using TSMC's N3B process, but Apple reportedly plans to switch to the lower-cost N3E process for next year's standard A17 chip designed for the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus. This will mark the first time that Apple has designed a chip specifically for its standard iPhone models. In previous years, Apple simply gave the entire iPhone lineup the same chip before staggering them by one year between the standard and the Pro models starting with 2022's iPhone 14.

The A15 Bionic chip in the iPhone 14 and ‌‌iPhone 14‌‌ Plus is a higher binned variant with one additional GPU core than the A15 used in the ‌iPhone 13‌ and ‌‌iPhone 13‌‌ mini, so some cross-generational differences despite outwardly featuring the same chip would not be unheard of, but this would effectively be the retention of the same name on a fundamentally different chip.

N3B is TSMC's original 3nm node created in partnership with Apple. N3E, on the other hand, is the simpler and cheaper node that most other TSMC clients will use. N3E has fewer EUV layers and lower transistor density than N3B, resulting in lower efficiency. N3B has also been ready for mass production for longer than N3E, but it has much lower yield. N3B was effectively designed as a trial node and is not compatible with TSMC's successor processes including N3P, N3X, and N3S, meaning that Apple has to redesign its future chips to take advantage of TSMC's innovations.

Apple was originally believed to be planning to use N3B for the A16 Bionic chip, but had to revert to N4 because it was not ready in time. It is likely the case that Apple is using the N3B CPU and GPU core design originally designed for the A16 Bionic in the A17 Pro, before switching to the original A17 designs with N3E later in 2024. This architecture will presumably be iterated on through TSMC's successor nodes for chips like the "A18" and "A19."

The Weibo user was first to say that the standard iPhone 14 models would retain the A15 Bionic chip, with the A16 being exclusive to the iPhone 14 Pro models – a rumor that went on to be widely corroborated and turned out true. Earlier this month, Haitong International Securities analyst Jeff Pu corroborated the rumor about 2024's A17 chip being fabricated with N3E, adding that the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will also feature 8GB of memory, up from 6GB on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.

Article Link: iPhone 16 to Feature First A-Series Chip Designed Specifically for Standard Models

Apple should be more worried about the relatively poor A17 Pro....a big disappointment to say the least and don't give me the 20% better performance on the efficiency cores, the high performance cores are only faster because of higher clock speeds and they are less efficient, and don't get me started on the heat dissipation issues for power users 😏

 

[Shirasaki]

N3E it's cheaper and better in general - efficiency/performance. Just less dense, but you can make a little bigger chip to offset that.

TSMC Details 3nm Evolution: N3E On Schedule, N3P and N3X To Deliver 5% Performance Gains

www.anandtech.com

Yeah but then tons of people seeing a 2% battery capacity drop would moan about "worse battery life", "SMALLER THAN LAST YEAR BATTERY" etc etc etc, even though the battery size is only one facet of the phone's battery life.

 

[4odomi]

Respect for those who got the 15, but I’m so glad I decided to hold off.

Probably a wise choice, I only ordered a Pro Max for my partner, because she was happy to go to a bigger model from hes standard 12 Pro in which case she will see a huge improvement in camera & battery life, but this is by no means a stellar upgrade by Apple and the A17 Pro is a huge disappointment. Definitely would not buy the standard Pro, the battery on that is awful 😏

 

[ersan191]

I bet it will have one less GPU core too.