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iPhone 16 to Feature First A-Series Chip Designed Specifically for Standard Models
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I was going to post the same thing. If they are designing a new base chip for N3E, it would make more sense to me to call it the A18, and would make the addition of the Pro naming make more sense. (And sounds like better marketing naming to me… both A18, “but you know you want the Pro”.)
Now the question that remains, is wether Ray Tracing will be limited to the Pro SoC. My guess is it will. Makes little sense to incorporate such advanced GPU power on a regular iPhone. I mean, regular iPhone can play games, but IMO RayTracing is not a must, and it is a big power draw.
Another guess I have, is that both the A18 and A18 Pro will have a new architecture, and maybe the regular A18 will focus on power efficiency (maybe 6 efficiency cores and no performance cores?), while the A18Pro will prioritize the performance over the efficiency. Both should, ideally, have more cores on their Neural Engine, as Machine Learning is the immediate future of computing.
But this are just ideas, you don’t have to agree with them, and I have no cristal ball.
The only thing that doesn’t make sense - is if they are going to design a new chip, why give it the A17 name and not A18? Next year just have the A18 and A18 Pro. Names matter.
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
I would be concerned about one possible consequence of that if Apple went too far down that route and I suspect I would be far from alone.
As a 15 Pro Max user I am already somewhat annoyed that ignoring Apple's official specifications but instead looking at the various battery life tests that are now coming out it's looking as if the regular 15 Plus has noticeably better battery life than the 15 Pro Max.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to "level down" - I don't begrudge the 15 Plus users the battery life they are getting - but I really feel that as someone who paid a quite significant premium for the Pro model, the model that is supposed to be the best in Apple's range, there shouldn't be any area where it falls quite a way short of a cheaper model so Apple should have delivered at least comparable battery life for the Pro Max vs the Plus this year. If what you suggest above widened the gap even further between Pro and non-Pro battery life I for one would be very angry so I don't think that Apple can afford to ignore efficiency on the Pro SoC.
That’s not really the rumor. They aren’t doing a “paired-down A17 Pro”. They are making a whole new chip using a different process.
Yeah, I understand what you say, and your concerns are valid.
Keep in mind, tho, that starting next year with the iPhone 16 Pro, the Pro models are getting bigger, from 6.1” and 6.7”, to 6.3” and 6.9” respectively. So probably the battery on Pro models will be bigger.
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I love my 15 Pro so far (coming from 12 Pro) but the iPhone 15 is a huge upgrade from the iPhone 14. The 14 is so irrelevant and over priced.
As I never had the 14 Pro I can’t compare that to what I have. My wife has it but I never used her phone. The biggest difference I can see is the weight.
I think that’s what most people don’t understand. Phones are at the point where you can and should keep for three or more years. I think that’s why Apple moved to keeping the same design for four years ( iPhone 6, 6S, 7, 8 ; iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XR, iPhone 11 ; & iPhone 12, iPhone 13, iPhone 14, iPhone 15 - with the 16 probably sporting some new design aspect). And the fact the iPhones get 5-6 years old iOS support means that you aren’t missing out on the majority of new features too.
They absolutely NEED to make a new Apple TV with the A17 Pro or some variation of the chip. If they can leverage their iPhone sales and get AAA games on the iPhone 15 Pro’s and have those games work on the Apple TV they can really compete on the gaming level. Especially considering their Mac’s can play these games too.
That's true. Those screen sizes throw everything up in the air a bit.
In general I was quite disappointed this year with how Apple seems to have managed the balancing act between performance and efficiency with the A17 Pro this year. I thought there was one quite telling part of the launch presentation when they presented the A17 Pro.
When discussing the A17 Pro CPU, for the performance cores the presenter gave a figure for the performance increase vs the A16 performance cores - fine, a design team should be monitoring whatever performance metrics it sees fit to ensure year-on-year progress and be transparent with how it's doing - but for the efficiency cores all the presenter said was that they were 3 times more efficient than the competition. That tells me nothing about whether Apple was able to further reduce the power consumption of the efficiency cores compared to last year. In other years when discussing the efficiency cores Apple has said things like "consumes X% less power than last year for the same performance". I would far rather have seen a statement like that to reassure me that Apple does still care about the efficiency part of the SoC equation because right now I'm not feeling too comfortable about that.
The way Apple uses their Always On Display it might actually be good to keep that on the Pro. And have the Standard to not have that so people can have choice and to keep some separation from the two models.
Apropos some of my moaning further up thread another aspect of the Pro AOD is that it can drop down to 1Hz refresh rate. For me a lot of my iPhone screen-on time is reading eBooks when I am looking at totally static screen content (a page of text) for maybe 59 seconds of each minute with only 1 second of action when I turn the page. Opening up the 1Hz refresh rates to apps could allow those with static content to deliver some quite dramatic battery life improvements either by explicitly opening up an API to allow something like Kindle to drop the refresh rate dramatically or for the iOS drivers to be able to detect extended periods of static content (and in computer terms even 1 second is a very extended period) and drop the refresh rate right down.
Reserving the AOD screen to the Pro, as well as the obvious AOD feature remaining a differentiating factor, could also add an additional differentiation by allowing the Pro models to have really big battery life advantages in certain use cases. Maybe my eBook-heavy use case is a bit extreme and I am unusual but I do wonder when totalled up over a day how much time other users spend looking at static content e.g. when reading messages or email and thinking how to reply, looking at what is on their calendar, looking up a contact, playing solitaire or some other game where you have to think about the next move even if only for a few seconds, etc, etc.
Note: As far as I'm aware the ability to clock down to 1Hz is only available to iOS to do the AOD display. If that has changed then obviously my comments don't make any sense.
So I don’t really know if “Pro Res” is a desirable feature. Let’s say that the “Pro Res” feature was on the main iPhone. Would someone who isn’t a techie and/or professional really want that feature? Heck - I’m a professional and a techie and I STILL can’t tell the difference between this 15 Pro and my old iPhone 12 Pro (which did not have the 120 hertz refresh rate). But I ended up choosing the Pro because I wanted the USB 3.0 feature and I also wanted the action button. The screen didn’t even matter to me.
Am I an outlier? I could be. But Apple is a huge company, and I can’t see them choosing to hinder their product from having a killer feature that could help them sell millions more iPhone 15’s. Why would they do that? The money they “save” can’t possibly outweigh the money they will get by selling millions upon millions of MORE iPhones 15’s by adding that one feature.
But if that feature isn’t in high demand. And people who buy an iPhone Standard model doesn’t even care or want that then the money they “save” on that feature they can use that money to invest in .. I dunno .. free software updates adding more features for five to six years. Right now the Pixel 7 will only have at most three years of software updates. Because I can guarantee you those customers want their phone to last them for many more years then three. My mom is one of those customers and she still has her iPhone 12 and doesn’t really care to upgrade. If her phone wasn’t designed to last that long she probably wouldn’t be buying iPhones anymore. Even if it has a Pro Res screen.
That’s true! Anything to make the battery life better is always good.
he/she is correct though, design rules for N3B are compatible with N4 but not N3E,P,X; thats why even thought A17P is on 3nm is kinda the same design as N4 just smaller...
that is not true. N3B is not design rule compatible with N3E , but it isn't compatible with N4 ( N5 family) either. The A17 and A17Pro have the same suffix , 'A17' , likely because they have the same micro-archtiecture. 'Design rules' have more an impact as to how the transistors and elements are laid out not so much "what" is connected to "what". Those are two different levels of design. Tjhose layout adjustments impact timing.
The 'redesign' here moving A17 to N3E is more so about re-spinning the layout than changing what the logic of the design actually does. Apple probably has to make substantive changes to the floorplan. ( e.g.,, the N3E caches/SRAM are going to be LARGER than the N3B caches/SRAM. That means things that were gathered around the formally smaller cache location have to be moved. And those more distance placement may introduce timing issues that have to be worked around. ). N3E cache sizes backslide all the way back to N5. That is substantive contributing reason why those rules aren't compatible with N3B.
N3B's problem is more so the design is "a bridge too far" too clever. N3E is regressing back to more N5-family on a narrow range of stuff.
Hardware Raytracing along the lines that Apple has outlined in patents is actually MORE power efficient than the alternative. If the objective is to save on "big power draw" removing the hardware support makes the consumption worse.
It takes space. Not enormous space but it does mean increased die space consumed.
More likely the A17 either drops a whole "GPU" core. The A17 Pro pro 'adds' one ( count up one from A16 generation) or is the same count but Apple bins down all the dies by default one GPU core ( A14X vs A14Z both were the exact same die. design sold with different GPU core counts. ).
Depends upon how much Apple wants to spend on 're-spin' the N3B design down to N3E. N3E probably results in a LARGER die ( it regresses from the shrink that N3B provides for cache/SRAM all the way back to N5 cache/SRAM size). It is a cheaper wafer to buy fab processing for, but if Apple is trying to cut costs they could trim out a GPU core to limbo down into a smaller die size. Tweaking the design to remove one GPU core from a base building block of a 6 GPU core cluster wouldn't be hard. ( Apple has left 2 E cores out of a 'standard' 4 core E cluster before without major 'drama'. Dropping one GPU core wouldn't be very expensive at all. )
Eventually Apple might be looking to toss the A17 into a $300 iPad or $!00 AppleTV. So 'more affordable' is likely on the list. The pressing contributing constraint is likely die costs and improving yields (with a smaller die. Bigger dies have more failures. )
There is little good ecosystem reason to dump the ray tracing any more there is to dump the ProRes acceleration from the A-seires. More consistent accelerated hardware across the whole Apple ecosystem makes the draconian practice of limited the future software base to just Apple GPU's only more economically practical.
Apple needs more folks wanted to adopt libraries that use the hardware acesslation so that it has bigger impact on the Mac space ( and iPad space).
Probably not. The CPU and GPU ( and NPU) core clusters used as basic building blocks have been shared between A-series and M-series ( and A--X ) so far. They'll probably take the same building blocks to make both.
The "pro" may end up being a bigger die because it goes into more expensive phones that can afford to 'pay' for a more expensive SoC. But the baseline efficiency is likely going to be the same. ( a bigger die would just consume incrementally more power .... because there is more 'stuff'. ) [ the M-series is mostly a bigger die with more of the same 'stuff'. there are some differences in the i/O subsystems of the die but is getting closer too with iPHones picking up USB-C sockets and faster port bandwidth. ]
I could see fewer performance cores, but, even if the chip worked well, the news release stating “Cores: no performance” seems like too much of a marketing faux pas!
Thanks for the clarification; how is it explained that the N3B efficiency & performance are almost the same as N4, looking at benchmarks and power consumption? For example, in this video, it seems like it is the same; yeah, IPC was increased with the slight change in micro-architecture, but the benefits of a smaller node don't seem to be present.
I am like you. I have never traded in a phone or used one of those dodgy buyback programs. I still have my first iPhone, the 3GS. It plays music in the lobby of my school. Battery is shot but it’s fine because it’s plugged in with a 30pin connector.
My daughters use my old 4s and 5s as their music players. The 4s battery only lasts about 3 to 4 hours of music but it’s fine.
The 5s had a replacement battery two years ago. It’s fine for a day of music playback while doing her homework, according to my daughter.
My 6S and 8S just got a new battery before the price gouge last year.
The 6S is my primary navigation device on my bike.
My 8 plus is my “multitasking device” because iPhones can’t.
My 11 pro max is my main phone.
Never seen the need to give the devices back to Apple at half their residual value.