What we know about the new Apple A16 Bionic in Apples iPhone 14


Posted by Stefan on 2022-08-23, Last updated:
Every year Apple releases a new iPhone series and with the release of the series always the latest Apple A processor. This has become even more important in recent years, as it has also formed the basis for Apple's M processor series since 2020. The Apple M processors are based on the same core architecture as the Apple A processors, but have been significantly upgraded in many areas such as memory bandwith, amount of memory or cache.


When will the Apple A16 Bionic be released?


According to Mark Gurman, a well-known and mostly accurate Apple insider, the Apple A16 Bionic is scheduled to be released on 07. September 2022 at this year's Apple Keynote. In addition to the new iPhones, the new Apple Watch Series 8 and the Apple Airpod Pro 2 are expected. The market launch, i.e. the real release date of the new iPhones, could be the 16. September 2022.


Where will the Apple A16 Bionic be used?


According to rumors, the latest smartphone processor from Apple will only be used in the top models iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. The normal iPhones (iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Max and possibly an unconfirmed iPhone 14 mini) are said to use the Apple A15 Bionic, which Apple has already installed in the previous year's models. Since this would be the first time that Apple would divide the processor according to the iPhone series, there is still a chance that the smaller iPhone models will also receive the new processor.


How many cores does the Apple A16 Bionic have?


The Apple A16 Bionic will most likely again have 6 CPU cores: two performance cores and 4 efficiency cores should work together as in the Apple A15 Bionic. CPU performance has never been an issue for the latest Apple iPhones anyway, which tend to lead the smartphone processor benchmark scores.

Therefore, it could well be the case that Apple will only opt for a relatively small increase in performance of 10 to 15 percent this year and will focus more on energy efficiency. In any case, the Apple iPhone 14 is said to have a longer battery life.

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Image processor supporting 48MP photo and 8K video


The cameras of the new iPhone are said to be the biggest update in several years: the main camera should be able to take photos with up to 48 MP. More interesting is the fact that 8K videos may be possible and the Apple Cinematic mode could be upgraded to 4K @ 60 fps.

The new Apple iPhone and the Apple A16 Bionic processor require significantly more bandwidth for this. This should come from the memory upgrade from LPDDR4X to LPDDR5. Apple had already taken this step in the Apple M2, which was presented in the summer of this year. We're talking about a increase in bandwidth of a whopping 50 percent!


Comparison of the Apple A15 Bionic with the Apple A16 Bionic



Apple A16 BionicApple A15 Bionic
CPU cores2 + 42 + 4
clock frequency3.3 GHz3.23 GHz
GPU cores54-5
Memory size6 GB (iPhone Pro)4 GB (iPhone) / 6 GB (iPhone Pro)
Memory typeLPDDR5-6400LPDDR4X-4266
Memory bandwidth51.2 GB/s34.1 GB/s
Instruction setARMv8ARMv8
Manufacturing ProcessTSMC 4NP (4 nm)TSMC N5 (5 nm)
ISP48 MP / 8K video @ 60 fps12 MP / 4K video @ 60 fps


You can find more technical data and benchmark results in the CPU comparison Apple A15 Bionic vs Apple A16 Bionic.


How much faster is the Apple A16 Bionic?


Compared to the Apple A15 Bionic, we expect a performance increase of about 10 to 15 percent. This could be achieved with a marginally increased clock frequency of 3.3 GHz (previously 3.2 GHz) and TSMC's optimized 4NP manufacturing process.

In addition, an increased efficiency of the processor in the range of 10 to 15 percent can also be expected. The Apple A16 Bionic is still using the ARMv8 command set.


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