A16 Bionic explained: what's new in Apple's Pro-grade mobile chip?

But how does this matter to your in real use, and what is the actual improvement compared to the previous model?

We are here to explain all that's new and noteworthy about the Apple A16 Bionic, compare it to the Apple A15, and also draw parallels between Apple's fastest chip and the current best processor on the Android side of things, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1.

But first, let's set the expectations straight with what Apple told us about this new processor. 

Before talking about the architecture of the new A16 Bionic chip, let's see how it performs in benchmarks, which may not be a perfect tool to measure performance, but are the best we've got.

You can see the gradual but consistent increase in performance every year, and it's really nice to see Apple's silicon team getting such consistent results year after year, and it does it again with the A16 Bionic and the 14 Pro Max.

The difference compared to the best Android has at the moment is quite striking. Apple did not joke when saying that it has an advantage of over 40% in CPU task over the best competitor in sight, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, as tested on the Galaxy Z Fold 4 here.

And compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chip in the S22 Ultra, the difference is even bigger.

We have also included the Galaxy S21 Ultra based on the Snapdragon 888 chipset from last year for context.

  

The A16 Bionic uses a 6-core CPU with two performance cores and four efficiency cores, and it's a similar design to the CPU on last year's iPhone 13. 

Apple mentioned that it uses new new efficiency cores, however, with their big advantage being they use just a third of the power of even the best efficiency cores of the competition. This is one of the elements that allows the iPhone to deliver great battery life while still being very responsive.

We have also just recently heard that iPhone 14 Pro models pair this new chip with the same 6GB of RAM as the previous models.

In the A16, Apple uses a 5-core GPU design, similar to the one in the Pro models from last year.

What is new here is that the GPU is coupled with 50% more memory bandwidth, which helps a great deal with graphic intensive games.

It takes a stress test to really understand how a GPU performance, and the 3D Mark Extreme stress test that we run lasts 20 minutes, plenty of time for any throttling issues to rear their head. As you can see above, the GPU in the A16 Bionic impresses with its initial burst of performance, but then quickly throttles, to levels nearly identical to that of the previous generation, and the gains in sustained graphics performance are not as high as you might expect.

Compared to the Android competition, however, the GPU in the A16 Bionic still stands in a league of its own. The "low" score after throttling is the one we take as being the more indicative of the real firepower of this GPU and it is nearly 45% faster than the competing solution on the Snapdragon/Android side of the fence. 

Apple says it has a new Neural Engine in the Apple A16 Bionic that is capable of 17 trillion operations per second (TOPS).

In comparison, last year, the Neural Engine was a 16-core affair capable of 15.8 TOPS.

The Neural Engine was introduced in 2017 with the Apple A11 chip used in the iPhone 8 and iPhone X family. Back then, it was a 2-core design that was able to handle "merely" 600 billion ops/sec.

There is a brand new component inside the A16 chip that we haven't seen on an iPhone chip before: the Display Engine.

This module enables the 1Hz refresh rate, Always On function, the higher peak brightness of the display and advanced antialiasing for the buttery smooth Dynamic Island animations.

Apple said the iPhone 14 Pro is the most significant camera upgrade for an iPhone ever, and a big part of that has to do with the new ISP and Photonic Engine.

This ISP was designed to support the higher res sensor and performs up to 4 trillion operations per photo. Impressive!

What do you want to learn about the A16 Bionic? Ask your questions in the comments below and we'll do our best to answer them.