According to reports, the A16 Bionic chip that Apple will carry on this year’s iPhone will be manufactured using the same 5nm process as the A15 Bionic on the iPhone 13, while Apple’s M2 for its next-generation Mac (the official name is unclear at this time, the following will be M2 Refers to) chips will have an even bigger leap in performance.
Meanwhile, Twitter owner @ShrimpApplePro broke the news that Apple is working on a “final” M1 chip variant that will use the more powerful cores in the A15 chip – perhaps the M1 Ultra isn’t the end of the M1 series yet?
@ShrimpApplePro shared a message “from a fairly reliable source” on Twitter, where he revealed Apple’s plans for the upcoming A16 and M2, as well as the “final” version of the M1 series of chips.
According to reports, the A16 will be based on TSMC’s 5nm process, which is the same as the A14, A15 and M1. It was previously reported that the A16 may be manufactured using TSMC’s 4nm process, and a DigiTimes report pointed out that Apple plans to use TSMC’s 4nm N4P process.
On the other hand, @ShrimpApplePro said that the A16 will use TSMC’s N5 process, which seems to indicate that the upgrade of the A16 may not be as big as imagined.
The A16 will reportedly feature small improvements to the CPU, GPU, and memory. According to a previous report by Tianfeng International industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, @ShrimpApplePro said that the A16 will be equipped with LPDDR 5 memory. Compared with LPDDR 4X memory, LPDDR 5 memory is up to 1.5 times faster and has a power efficiency improvement of up to 30%.
Apple is also said to be working on the final version of the M1 series, which will include an updated kernel. The M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra chips use energy-efficient “Icestorm” cores and high-performance “Firestorm” cores – just like the A14 Bionic chip.
The Apple M1 variant is said to be based on the A15 Bionic, featuring a “Blizzard” energy-efficient core and an “Avalanche” high-performance core. Other reports say the A16 chip will only debut in the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, which will continue to use the iPhone 13’s A15 Bionic chip.
The M2 chip will likely debut in the redesigned MacBook Air, before making its way to new Macs and possibly a new iPad Pro later this year. We can’t yet confirm the final names of the “A16”, “M2” and the final M1 chip variant, and the news has not been officially confirmed.