Apple A17 Pro is just an optimized version of A16 Bionic
On the 13th of September, 2023, amidst the autumnal unveiling of its latest innovations, Apple officially introduced the iPhone 15 series of smartphones. Paramount among these are the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, both equipped with the novel A17 Pro chipset. This marks Apple’s inaugural foray into harnessing the 3nm fabrication process, setting a precedent as the industry’s first chipset of its kind.
According to Apple, the A17 Pro boasts a CPU performance augmentation of up to 10%, while the GPU witnesses a 20% enhancement over its predecessors. Leveraging hardware-accelerated ray tracing technology, it operates at a velocity quadruple that of its software-driven counterpart. However, reports from Wccftech intimate that the disparities in performance between the A17 Pro and the A16 Bionic are more subtle than ostentatiously claimed. Recent leaks suggest the chasm between the two might be even more diminutive than initially postulated.
Documentation reveals that while the A15 Bionic bore the core moniker “H14C” and the A16 Bionic “H15”, the A17 Pro has been christened “H15 Coll”. As Apple’s maiden 3nm chipset, the A17 Pro curiously hasn’t been bequeathed a distinct performance core nomenclature. This suggests that Apple, in essence, views the A17 Pro as a nuanced iteration of the A16 Bionic, albeit transmogrified by the 3nm process.
Both the A17 Pro and A16 Bionic CPUs are replete with two performance cores and four efficiency cores, accompanied by a refined frequency and microarchitecture optimization. The performance cores have witnessed enhancements in branch prediction and expanded widths for both decoding and execution engines. The GPU core count has swelled from five to six, with the transistor tally escalating from 160 billion to 190 billion. Upon pragmatic scrutiny, it appears the CPU performance enhancements of the A17 Pro predominantly emanate from frequency optimizations, while the GPU improvements stem from an augmented core count.
Despite the iPhone 15 series being endowed with more capacious batteries, their longevity mirrors that of the iPhone 14 series. The transition to the avant-garde 3nm fabrication process seemingly hasn’t conferred discernible advantages. Wccftech opines that the A17 Pro might merely be a provisional stratagem by Apple, with substantive enhancements perhaps reserved for next year’s chip iteration.
