No, it's an A15 optimized for energy, just like the A15 was an A14 optimized for energy.
Given that many more people complain "I wish my phone had longer battery life" than complain "I wish my phone were faster" this seems like the appropriate optimization...
People are upset about this not because of iPhones exactly but because they assume this means macs don't get faster. But that chain of logic includes an implicit assumption -- that future macs will use the same cores as future iPhones. It's not clear that this is a very good assumption...
Apple is perfectly capable of designing/improving three cores every year (P core, E core, Chinook core [very small ARM64 core used as controller for various hardware, GPU, NPU, etc]). Why can't they expand this to four cores? Obviously IP will be shared across all cores (like it is today) but the highest end cores will be optimized for performance in a way that makes sense for always-powered devices but which does not make sense for battery devices.
Why did Apple upgrade the MBA and cheapest MBP, but not the mac mini to the M2?
Ahh, well, when you understand that, you will understand my point...
Hm. Not sure where you want to go with this. Too many assumptions here.
First, I don't think people are upset at all, I'm certainly not. The only conclusion I draw here is that the pace of SoC "innovation" in mobile space is slowing even more. That's all. And I don't see this as a bad thing for the industry. I can see this as a bad thing for Apple though as this means all high-end mobile SoC will be more and more similar from now on.
Second, I don't think A15 was an "energy optimized A14". It got many architectural updates to improve most key areas. With A16, we don't know yet what those updates really are. But so far, it's possible those are mostly focused on the Display Engine/ISP. CPU/GPU gains would mostly come from the move to 4nm (higher clock speeds) and improved RAM bandwidth. I have no clue about the Neural engine at this point, but I have little hope.
I'll wait for the traditional "deep dive" from Anandtech, but I would not be surprised to see the CPU/GPU cores are *identical* to those of A15.
If A16 really is A15 on 4nm with tweaked memory controller, Display engine and ISP, that would be a first.
Again, not saying this is a bad thing, no one expected to see 25%+ perfs increase every year till the end of time. But no matter what Apple states in its marketing slides, real world/sustained perfs of high end SoC from the competition show they are catching up real quick. I'd even say the SD8+Gen1 is actually just as good as the A15.
A16 being only a marginal upgrade means just this: Apple lost their undisputed SoC supremacy. Not a bad thing for the industry. Just a key advantage lost for Apple.
As for the link with the "M" line of SoC, well, sure, they could afford to design more core variants. But they will do this only if it makes (financial) sense. And given what we just said about Apple being unable to keep their advance in the matter, I don't see how this would be viable. Dealing with 3 designs and tweaking them for their target market makes way more sense. AMD got this right with their latest designs.
As for why the >Mac Mini has no M2 yet.... the answser is likely "marketing"/"timing"
