At 1:00 a.m. last Thursday, Apple released the iPhone 14 series, among which iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus are equipped with Apple A15 processors. Only the advanced iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max use the latest Apple A16 processor. Moreover, at the press conference, Apple did not dare to promote the performance of the A16 processor, and only briefly compared it with the Apple A13 processor 3 years ago. Apple's operation makes people feel that there is something secret to the processor of Apple's A16.
Recently, detailed information about Apple A16 processor has been updated. The CPU main frequency of Apple A16 processor has reached 3.46GHz unprecedentedly. Compared with the 3.2GHz of Snapdragon 8+ Gen1, it is 0.26GHz higher than the 3.23GHz of the previous generation of Apple A15 processor, the Apple A16 processor is also 0.23GHz higher. We all know that mobile phone processors are generally difficult to break through 3GHz, and only a very small number of top-level processors can break through 3GHz.
Apple A16 processor uses TSMC 4nm process. Compared with TSMC's second-generation 5nm process of Apple A15 processor, the improvement is not large, and it is more just a name changed. In this situation where there is almost no process dividend, Apple's choice to significantly increase the CPU main frequency will have a great impact on power consumption. After all, Qualcomm Snapdragon processor is 2.8GHz in the 845 generation. Now, the main frequency of Snapdragon 8 Gen1 without the + version is only 3GHz.
And from the perspective of architecture, the performance of Apple's A16 processor is also not ideal. Currently, the running score of Apple A16 processor has been announced, with a single core performance of 1887 points, while the single core performance of Apple A15 processor is 1740 points. Combined with the 3.46GHz main frequency of Apple A16 and the 3.23GHz main frequency of Apple A15, their IPC performance is 545.3 and 538.6 respectively, of which the improvement of Apple A16 processor is only 1% improvement.
This means that the Apple A16 processor may not have changed its architecture. It is a very toothpaste-squeezing upgrade, which completely improves performance by overclocking. The GPU of Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 is a good example. The Adreno 660 was greatly overclocked by the Adreno 650, and the GPU power consumption eventually showed a significant overturn. This time, the Apple A16 processor is still CPU overclocking, which has a greater impact on daily use, so it is likely to fail. Perhaps Apple also realized this problem, so it did not replace the Apple A16 processor for the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus.
Faced with the not-so-powerful Apple A16 processor, we should not be so anxious when purchasing iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 14 Pro Max. It is better to wait for the first batch of users to experience it. If Apple A16 processor does not fail, it will not be too late to buy it. At that time, it may be available for purchase. So, do you think the Apple A16 processor will fail?
