Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
63,194
30,136



In a feature for WIRED, Om Malik sat down with Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller and chipmaking engineer Anand Shimpi to discuss the A13 Bionic chip in the new iPhone 11, iPhone 11 Pro, and iPhone 11 Pro Max.

a13-bionic-chip-iphone-11-pro.jpg

Malik first provides an overview of the A13 chip's specs and performance improvements:8.5 billion transistors, an approximately 23 percent increase over the A12 chip's 6.9 billion transistors
Six-core CPU: two 2.66GHz high-performance cores named Lightning and four efficiency cores named Thunder
Quad-core graphics processor, an Apple-designed image processor, and an octa-core neural engine for machine learning that is capable of one trillion operations per second
Up to 20 percent performance increase across all of the main components, including the CPU, GPU, and neural engine
Up to 30 percent more power efficient than the A12 chipSchiller told Malik that one of the biggest examples of the performance increase this year is text-to-speech on iPhones.

"We've enhanced our iOS 13 text-to-speech capabilities such that there is much more natural language processing, and that's all done with machine learning and the neural engine," Schiller explained.

Shimpi noted that when designing its A-series chips, Apple focuses on both performance and efficiency. "We talk about performance a lot publicly. But the reality is, we view it as performance per watt. We look at it as energy efficiency, and if you build an efficient design, you also happen to build a performance design."

The article notes that Apple's chipmaking team will study how apps are being used on iOS devices to optimize future chip designs. "For applications that don't need the additional performance, you can run at the performance of last year's and just do it at a much lower power," Shimpi said.

Machine learning also plays a big role in the A13 chip, helping to manage battery life and optimize performance, according to Schiller. "There wasn't machine learning running ten years ago. Now, it's always running, doing stuff."

Article Link: Apple Says A13 Bionic Chip Was Designed With Performance-Per-Watt Focus
 

chatin

macrumors 6502a
May 27, 2005
929
598
Distopian beauty takes 8 pictures and combines them with AI to get the perfect shot.
 

Cosmosent

macrumors 68020
Apr 20, 2016
2,315
2,693
La Jolla, CA
Still NO mention of the Performance Controller (i.e., cpu scheduler) in the A13 ?

Trust, but Verified ... Apple, I'l let you know shortly, by weekend's end if possible.

You know what I'm talking about !
 

dmylrea

macrumors 601
Sep 27, 2005
4,774
6,796
All this power to browse social media, watch Netflix, give me map directions and send emails! While the A13 has impressive stats, it seems more at home in a notebook than a phone.

It's great an iPhone 11 Pro has the power cure cancer, but will anyone really tap into that power?

Speaking of power, will the A13 keep Siri and Flashlight from draining my battery overnight? ;)
 

Textime

macrumors regular
Jan 25, 2016
159
323
Apple can easily include this chip into the next 4 generations and all people are still satisfied. Please put your focus instead on a premium iPhone X Mini
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.