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An early benchmark for the A16 chip in the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max suggested only modest speed improvements, but an additional score uploaded to Geekbench today indicates that we could see a more significant jump in performance compared to the A15 chip.

iphone-14-gold.jpg

The A16 chip in the iPhone 14 Pro that was benchmarked earned a single core score of 1887, a 10.5 percent improvement over the 1707 score earned by the A15 in the iPhone 13 Pro.

iphone-14-pro-max-geekbench.jpg

As for multi-core performance, there are notable speed gains. The A16 earned a multi-core score of 5455, up 17.1 percent from the 4659 score earned by the A15 chip.

The result that we saw earlier this week from an iPhone 14 Pro Max suggested that multi-core performance was at around 4664, which would put the A16 barely over the A15 in terms of performance. Given that the A16 is running on an updated 4-nanometer process compared to the 5-nanometer process of the A15, the latest score shared today is more in line with expectations. Multi-core performance could perhaps even be somewhat higher if the iPhone that was benchmarked is still going through its initial setup process and uploading content to iCloud.

Apple's A16 chip is limited to the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max, and we'll need additional benchmarks to get a better average for what we can expect in terms of performance improvements. The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus are still using the A15 chip from last year, but with the 5-core GPU that was originally limited to the iPhone 13 Pro models.

Article Link: A16 in iPhone 14 Pro is 17% Faster Than A15 in iPhone 13 Pro in New Benchmark
 
17% faster in synthetic tests, but hardly noticeable in real world use. But some will upgrade regardless.

Yeah... probably a pretty decent percentage of the 600,000+ iPhones Apple manufactures and sells every day of the year (on the average).
 
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No reason for faster processor. Power consumption is much more important.

Point taken. But until now, it seemed like performance and power consumption improved hand in hand. Something like 20-40% improvement per year. And batteries must have improved and continually improving.
 
Considering Moore's Law, this is actually quite unimpressive, right?
I mean, for ages Intel wasn’t following Moore’s law and only increasing by a few percent per year.

Phones are quite thermally constrained. Apple balances clock against new features. Six new features of this iPhone that impact battery life and therefore core clock/thermal constraints: always on display, brighter display, hour of extra battery life, 4K Cinema mode, 48MP RAW photos, and Dynamic Island widgets always running.

You can’t get everything magically. And even yet, this is the fastest smartphone chip in the world. I don’t even think the old A15 has been passed yet. So 17% improvement on the fastest phone chip in the world is extremely impressive, IMO.
 
Considering Moore's Law, this is actually quite unimpressive, right?
Moose’s law is about the number of transistors doubling every 2 years or so, not necessarily about the performance (although it tends to also increase with the transistor count albeit at a somewhat inconsistent rate). 2 years ago the a14’s transistor count was around 11 billion and the a16’s count is 16 billion. 2 years before that the a12 had 7 billion. The slower increase is not too surprising given Apple’s emphasis on efficiency over power with the 13 and 14.
 
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