Apple

All the members of the iPhone 16 series will use Apple A18 chips

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We are all aware of the fact that Apple used the same last year chips on the non-pro models. Perhaps it was not a good approach since users who were concerned about the performance were bound to upgrade their devices to Pro models. As of now, analyst Jeff Pu claims that the next year’s iPhone 16 series will all be powered by the A18 chip.

The report claims that all the members of the iPhone 16 series will feature TSMC’s 3nm A-series chips based on the N3E process. Interestingly, the standard models of the series will feature A18 Bionic chips, whereas the Pro models will feature A18 Pro chips. This suggests that the normal models will bypass the entire N3B fabrication process at TSMC and switch directly to the N3E process, resulting in a considerable performance improvement.

Why Apple is opting for this approach?

The Cupertino-based tech firm debuted the A17 Pro chips with 19 billion transistors. It provided a massive increase in performance since the iPhone 15 Pro can support PC-level games like Resident Evil natively. Despite the performance boost, the chips offer low yields. It indicates the ratio of effectively produced chips in contrast to the total possible chips on a single wafer.

Low yields may result in a large financial loss due to Apple’s immense size and TSMC’s supremacy (which accounts for over 90% of the manufacture of the A17 Pro processors) even though corporations are normally responsible for defective chips.

Therefore, upgrading the non-Pro models immediately to the A18 chips will not only provide regular users with a significant performance improvement but also enable Apple to make significant financial savings. Furthermore, the second-generation technology offers higher power efficiency and noticeably better performance when compared to the existing N3B used for the A17 Pro.
October 16, 2023