Apple A17 Bionic performance improvement may be lower than expected

Recently, some news about A17 Bionic has been circulating on the internet, and even leaked test scores have appeared. The reason why it has received so much attention is partly due to Apple’s first introduction of TSMC’s 3nm process. In the past two to three years, the performance improvement of Apple A-series SoCs has been relatively small, and many people are looking forward to a change after switching to the 3nm process node this year.

Process technology is one of the key points for the superior performance of Apple A-series SoCs. Qualcomm’s planned third-generation Snapdragon 8 this year will still use TSMC’s N4P process based on the 5nm process node, which has some differences. However, according to NotebookCheck‘s report, the final performance of the Apple A17 Bionic may not be as powerful as previously rumored, and the performance improvement may not exceed 20%.

It is understood that this is related to the fact that TSMC’s N3B process cannot proceed as planned. Due to problems with FinFET, the yield rate is not so good, causing Apple to lower its performance target. There are reports that FinFET is not suitable for transistors below 4nm, which may force TSMC to make some changes. According to TSMC’s plan, it will switch to Gate-all-around FETs (GAAFET) transistors in the next generation 2nm process node.

Although it has been affected by the manufacturing process, with Apple’s proficiency in chip design, it is believed that the performance of the Apple A17 Bionic will still be satisfactory. Rumor has it that the performance improvement of Qualcomm’s third-generation Snapdragon 8 is not small, and it may even exceed many people’s expectations, which may put some pressure on Apple.