Apple’s A-series chips are among the greatest within the smartphone business, providing the best ranges of efficiency, effectivity, and gaming capabilities. With the discharge of the iPhone 15 sequence, Apple launched a brand new “Professional” chipset solely for the iPhone 15 Professional fashions, generally known as the Apple A17 Professional.
Alternatively, the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus use the identical A16 Bionic from final 12 months. On this article, let’s check out the detailed comparability between the Apple A17 Professional and A16 Bionic chipsets and discover out the enhancements it brings in CPU, GPU, and different key areas.
Apple 17 Professional vs A16 Bionic: Specs Comparability
Class
A17 Professional chip
A16 Bionic chip
Fabrication Course of
3nm expertise
4nm expertise
CPU
6 cores
6 cores
CPU Configuration
2 cores @ 3.78 GHz + 4 cores @ 2.11 GHz
2 cores @ 3.46 GHz + 4 cores @ 2.02 GHz
GPU
6-core
5-core
RAM (Unified Reminiscence)
8GB
6GB
RAM Kind
LPDDR5
LPDDR5
Transistors
19 billion
16 billion
Neural Engine
16-core (35 TOPS)
16-core (17 TOPS)
Video codecs supported
H.264, H.265, AV1, VP8, VP9, Movement JPEG
H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, Movement JPEG
Connectivity
Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 (LE)
Wi-Fi 6
Apple A17 Professional vs A16 Bionic: CPU
The Apple A17 Professional is the world’s first 3nm node process-based chipset for smartphones. This permits Apple to pack much more transistors per chip in comparison with the A16 Bionic, which relies on the TSMC 4nm node course of. The A17 Professional comes with 19 billion transistors, whereas the A16 Bionic packs 16 billion transistors.
By way of uncooked CPU efficiency, each chipsets have hexa-core CPUs. Nevertheless, the A17 Professional delivers a ten% increase in efficiency over the A16 Bionic. The high-performance cores of the A17 Professional run at 3.78GHz, whereas the A16 Bionic’s high-performance cores run at 3.46GHz. Equally, there’s a small bump within the clock pace of the power-efficiency cores as nicely, with the A17 Professional operating at 2.11GHz in comparison with the A16 Bionic’s 2.02GHz.
Apple A17 Professional vs A16 Bionic: Benchmarks
Now that we now have taken a take a look at the CPU efficiency enchancment, here is how the 2 chipsets examine throughout varied benchmark purposes:
Benchmark Software
Take a look at Kind
A17 Professional
A16 Bionic
Antutu 10
CPU
380664
365046
GPU
575404
460373
Reminiscence
267719
217105
GeekBench 6
Single-core
2936
2619
Multi-core
7372
6808
3DMark
Rating
10007 (59 FPS)
9848 (58 FPS)
Wanting on the benchmarks (by way of NanoReview), Apple’s claims concerning the A17 Professional delivering a ten% increase in CPU efficiency appear true. On the subject of GPU efficiency, the leap is much more important, and you’ll find extra about it down beneath.
Apple A17 Professional vs A16 Bionic: GPU
One of many greatest enhancements on the A17 Professional over the A16 Bionic is the brand new GPU. The A17 Professional contains a new “Professional-class” 6-core GPU, up from 5-core on A16 Bionic. This new GPU brings enhancements in three key areas: efficiency, effectivity, and new rendering options. Apple says the GPU on A17 Professional presents 20% higher efficiency in comparison with the one on A16 Bionic.
The brand new Mesh Shading method lets sport builders add extra particulars to their video games all whereas lowering load on the GPU. And, the A17 Professional is the primary Apple chipset to assist hardware-based ray tracing. Whereas competitor chips like Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and MediaTek Dimensity 9200+ have featured ray-tracing from a very long time, that is the primary time Apple’s processor has gained this characteristic.
In comparison with A16 Bionic, the brand new hardware-based ray-tracing on A17 Professional delivers real-life like gameplay with as much as 4 occasions higher frames per second. What’s extra? The A17 Professional is able to providing console-grade gaming efficiency on iPhone 15 Professional fashions. Apple has partnered with sport builders of The Division: Resurgence, Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4, Loss of life Stranding, and even Murderer’s Creed: Mirage to brings these video games to the iPhone 15 Professional fashions.
Apple A17 Professional vs A16 Bionic: RAM and Switch Speeds
On the subject of RAM, the A17 Professional presents 8GB of LPDDR5 on-board reminiscence, which is 2GB greater than the A16 Bionic. This additional reminiscence ought to end in a smoother expertise when launching or switching between apps.
The iPhone 15 Professional fashions introduce USB-C for the primary time, and the A17 Professional’s USB 3 controller enhances knowledge switch speeds considerably. With the brand new USB 3 controller on A17 Professional, these new iPhone fashions assist speeds of as much as 10 gigabits per second, which is roughly 20 occasions quicker than the USB controller discovered within the A16 Bionic.
Apple A17 Professional vs A16 Bionic: Neural Engine
The Neural Engine on the Apple A17 Professional has additionally seen an enormous bump in efficiency in comparison with the Neural Engine on A16 Bionic. Apple says the brand new 16-core engine is as much as twice as quick as in comparison with the A16 Bionic and might course of as much as 35 trillion operations per second. This permits the iPhone 15 Professional and iPhone 15 Professional Max to carry out on-device ML capabilities, akin to lifting a topic from a photograph, textual content prediction, and auto-correct much more shortly and successfully.
Apple A17 Professional vs A16 Bionic: Different Options
A17 Professional contains a devoted ProRes codec engine. This engine brings assist for hardware-level encoding and decoding assist for varied video codecs akin to HEVC, H.264, and ProRes to the iPhone 15 Professional fashions. One other notable addition to the A17 Professional over A16 Professional is a devoted AV1 decoder. This engine permits the brand new iPhone 15 Professional fashions to decode AV1 movies proper on the machine. For these unaware, AV1 is the brand new video format that each main platform akin to YouTube and Netflix are adopting as a result of it presents higher-quality video with out consuming a considerable amount of space for storing.
On the entire, the Apple A17 Professional chipset brings a notable enchancment over the A16 Bionic. Whereas these enhancements is probably not groundbreaking (and won’t even be noticeable in day-to-day use), they may make a distinction if you happen to plan to make use of your new iPhone over an extended interval. Whereas there have been a number of reviews that A17 Professional is inflicting heating points on the iPhone 15 Professional fashions, the newest iOS 17.0.3 replace appears to have fastened it.
Should you’re shopping for a brand new iPhone and are questioning how a lot of a distinction the chipsets make, it is value noting that the A17 Professional alone is not a compelling motive to improve. Nevertheless, there are a number of different main components at play, akin to battery life, show high quality, and digital camera, which we now have mentioned intimately proper right here.
[Images Via: Apple]
The iPhone 15 comes with a 6.1-inch OLED show with the brand new Dynamic Island, a twin digital camera setup, new colours, and a USB Kind-C port. It is powered by the Apple A16 Bionic chip, and it is essentially the most reasonably priced high-end iPhone you may get your fingers on as we speak.
The iPhone 15 Professional is the brand new Professional sequence flagship from Apple. It is geared up with the brand new Apple A17 Professional chipset and 8GB of RAM. It is available in new colours, and it has an much more highly effective digital camera setup and a refined design.
The iPhone 15 Professional Max is the newest and the best smartphone in Apple’s lineup. The smartphone is powered by the newest Apple A17 Professional chipset, coupled with 8GB of RAM. It has a extra refined Titanium chassis that makes it lighter and extra snug, and it contains a new periscope telephoto digital camera.