Although particulars have been scant, Apple launched a number of new chips at its “Awe Dropping” iPhone 17 occasion on Tuesday. There have been new A-series processors as anticipated: the A19 within the iPhone 17 and A19 Professional within the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Professional. However Apple additionally shortly introduced a brand new C1X mobile modem and N1 community processor.
We’ve restricted details about these new chips, however right here’s what we all know thus far.
A19 and A19 Professional
The A19 seems solely in a single telephone, the iPhone 17. Apple says it’s made with ”probably the most superior 3nm expertise,” which in all probability means TSMC’s newest N3P course of. As with the A18, it’s received 6 CPU cores (2 efficiency, 4 effectivity) and 5 GPU cores.
It’s arduous to inform what’s truly improved, and by how a lot. A brand new show engine is important for ProMotion and always-on show, however it’s nothing we haven’t seen in different Apple chips for years.
Apple
The 5-core GPU is “a giant step up,” in response to Apple, with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, mesh shaders, and MetalFX upscaling. Frankly, it sounds just like the GPU cores of the A18 Professional. Apple says the GPU will likely be 20 % sooner than the A18. The Neural Engine can also be “improved,” however apart from elevated reminiscence bandwidth, Apple doesn’t get into specifics.
Issues get a bit extra attention-grabbing with the A19 Professional, which is discovered within the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 Professional and Professional Max.
The efficiency cores have higher front-end bandwidth and department prediction, making it “the quickest CPU in any smartphone,” in response to Apple. Leaked Geekbench scores present a single-core rating of practically 3,900, which is certainly a file and 300-400 factors increased than A18 Professional (round 10 % sooner).
Apple
The effectivity cores have 50 % extra cache, which ought to enhance energy effectivity (any time you’ll be able to seize information from cache, you keep away from fetching it from RAM, which makes use of extra energy).
The GPU will get some large upgrades, too. It’s received 5 cores within the iPhone Air and 6 cores within the iPhone 17 Professional, however the cores are improved lots over the A18 Professional’s GPU. Every has enhancements to compression, dynamic caching, and double the 16-bit floating level math fee. There are additionally new “Neural Accelerators” within the GPU cores, which triple the height compute because the A18 Professional’s GPU cores for the sorts of operations used typically in AI and Machine Studying.
Apple
That’s along with the improved Neural Engine and the Machine Studying accelerators within the CPU cores. Apple mentioned it gives “MacBook Professional ranges of compute in an iPhone,” and whereas no particular MacBook Professional mannequin was talked about, it’s a giant declare.
Apple mentioned the A19 Professional has “much more reminiscence” than the A18 Professional, which implies the rumors of these telephones having 12GB of RAM are in all probability true.
The upgraded C1X modem
Whereas introducing the iPhone Air, we received a real shock: Apple introduced that it makes use of a brand new upgraded model of the C1 modem, referred to as C1X.
Apple’s first 5G modem, the C1, was launched within the iPhone 16e this spring. Now, half a yr later, Apple has an replace that it says is “as much as 2x sooner.” Apple additionally says that it’s sooner than the modem within the iPhone 16 Professional “for a similar mobile applied sciences” whereas utilizing 30 % much less total energy, which sound like a phrase meant to weasel its manner out of shedding some efficiency comparisons.
We don’t know if the opposite iPhone 17 fashions have newer Qualcomm modems than the one present in final yr’s fashions, however the C1 was roughly on par with these excluding missing mmWave assist. It was higher in sure conditions and worse in others, very a lot depending on service and site.
Apple
The Qualcomm modem within the iPhone 16 line was not the corporate’s top-of-the-line providing, so the C1 holding its personal in lots of conditions is just not as spectacular as it would in any other case be. However for Apple to have an replace with as much as double the efficiency and extra energy effectivity in lower than a yr is sort of a feat.
N1 wi-fi networking
The iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Professional, and iPhone Air all use a brand new Apple-designed wi-fi networking chip referred to as N1, which allows Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread networking. This makes these the primary Apple units with Bluetooth 6.
Past that, we don’t know a lot about it. There are not any efficiency or effectivity claims, actually. Apple says it “improves total efficiency and reliability in key areas like Private Hotspot and AirDrop.” There are lots of qualifiers in that sentence, so it’s finest to order judgment on the N1 chip till there are some good impartial exams.
Nonetheless, Apple is full pace forward on taking the total wi-fi stack beneath its management, and it’s good to see that it it’s coming proper out of the gate with assist for the most recent requirements.