The M1 chip in the new Macs with Apple Silicon SoCs is just the beginning: Apple is already developing the next A15 and A16 processors for the 2021-22 iPhones and Macs
It made its official debut just over two months ago the new Apple Bionic A14 SoC but, for industry analysts, it’s already time to start thinking about the future. How will the next evolutions, namely A15 and A16, of what, by many, has rightfully been included among the best processors of recent times?
A14 Bionic by Apple is the chip of choice of the fourth-generation iPad Air, as well as the new iPhone 12, iPhone 12 Pro, iPhone 12 Pro Max and the small home iPhone 12 Mini. The 64-bit System on a Chip with ARM architecture has beaten, according to data reported by Cupertino,its predecessor A13 with a 16% faster speed, reaching up to 40% compared to the A12 model compared to which it is also improved from the point of view of the GPU, improved by 30%. So it’s hard not to notice the big leap in quality achieved in just two generations, so much so that it already lets you imagine what may happen in the coming years when Apple comes to launch its future A16 on the market.
Apple’s SoC, how Apple’s A15 and A16 chips will look like
To begin with, A14 is among the smallest of its kind with a size of 5nm but could, in the near future, be beaten by an even more minute specimen. The confirmation of this comes directly from TSMC, the company that materially realizes for Apple the small prodigy that has indicated how the Cupertino company is currently the only one among its customers to take advantage of the 5nm production lines of its foundry, among the most advanced in the industry and developed for the realization of the SoC of HiSilicon, subsidiary of Huawei, first of this size.
The statement comes directly from a report produced by TrendForce on Apple’s manufacturing partner. According to other information, included in the same document, the research firm states that TSMC would be ready to receive an order related to a 4nm “A16” SoC. All this would consistently fall within the timeline of action of the bitten Apple that, from 2022, could therefore already count on the chip two generations ahead of the current one.
Apple SoC, the future is always smaller and more performing
It is a race to reach more and more inscrutable dimensions the one of Apple that, starting from the SoC A10X from 10nm, has seen its SoCs shrinking year by year until the one used in the current generation of iPhone, from 5nm just like the now famous M1 mounted on the new Macbook Air and Macbook Pro presented only a few days ago. As the results show, small size does not correspond to limited performance; on the contrary, the improvements have not gone unnoticed by experts in the field as well as by the users themselves.
According to experts, the next generation of iPhone, which will be iPhone 13, could already count on the new 5nm SoC with wafer technology, which is made through a thin layer of semiconductor on which chips are made with integrated circuits. Apple, however, may not be the only one, since for TrendForce also Qualcomm would have rolled up its sleeves to give a hard time with its own processor from 4nm for future Snapdragon.