While the iPhone 15 is equipped with the older A16 Bionic chip that powers the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max. The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max are equipped with a brand new chip, the A17 Pro.
Let’s start with the basics: The A17 Pro is Apple’s first chip based on a 3-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing process, which represents a huge technological leap from the 5-nanometer process used in the A16 Bionic. A smaller manufacturing process means more transistors can be placed closer together on the chip, resulting in a smaller, faster, cooler and more power-efficient chip.
According to Apple, these transistors are so small that some of their elements measure only 12 silicon atoms. In short, they are tiny.
The very high-end mobile processor
Each chip has 19 billion transistors, six billion more than the A16 Bionic.
When it comes to cores, the A17 Pro is identical to its predecessor, with two high-performance cores and four energy-efficient cores, although we don’t yet know how fast these cores operate (the cores of the A16 Bionic operate at 3.46 GHz and 2.02 GHz respectively). But Apple said they were 10% faster, had better branch prediction for faster code execution, and the decoding and execution engines had higher bandwidths.
Apple claims that the A17 Pro is the fastest single-threaded mobile processor – and I have no doubt about that claim, given that the competition is struggling to keep up with the A16 Bionic – with performance that rivals those of high-end PCs.
A dedicated USB 3 controller
Efficiency Cores are also the “most efficient mobile processor” and deliver three times more performance per watt than the competition.
The Neural Engine – the part of the chip that handles machine learning and performs tasks like on-device voice recognition, auto-correction, or determining subjects in photos you take for indexing – features 16 cores – the same as those in the A16 Bionic – but its performance is doubled and it is capable of performing 35 trillion operations per second.
The A17 Pro also integrates dedicated video processing engines in the ProRes codec, an AV1 video decoder, and an engine that powers ProMotion and the display.
With the Lightning port replaced by USB-C, Apple has also added a dedicated USB 3 controller that supports transfer speeds of up to 10 gigabits per second.
A “revolutionary” GPU
But what about the GPU?
The A17 Pro features a completely redesigned GPU. Apple/ZDNET
This GPU is, according to Apple, “revolutionary” and “all-new” and a GPU that Apple describes as “pro class”. It has been redesigned with performance and efficiency in mind, as well as handling complex applications, and also includes new rendering features. It has six cores, one more than the A16 Bionic, making it up to 20% faster.
Additionally, and this is aimed at game developers and AR developers, the A17 Pro’s GPU features hardware ray tracing acceleration to improve the accuracy of reflected light in rendered scenes. Hardware acceleration enables ray tracing four times faster than software rendering and enables much higher frame rates, and therefore, a more immersive experience.
A new software feature aimed at improving games is Metal-effects upscaling, which combines the GPU and Neural Engine to provide better graphics while consuming less power.
This little chip therefore contains a lot of things.
Source: “ZDNet.com”