The base model iPhone 14 (and its larger counterpart) is expected to stick with the A15 chip this year, while the Pro models will get the A16. This suggests that the performance of the iPhone 14 Pro could be significantly better than the base models.
There’s a lot of speculation as to what this might mean in terms of iPhone 14 Pro performance, but it’s possible to at least get a rough run…
Macworld’s Jason Cross gave it his best shot. All comparisons are with the iPhone 13 Pro.
First, there’s no guesswork when it comes to the chip manufacturing process: TSMC’s most advanced process is a third-generation 5nm process known as N4P. This offers some performance boost, but a relatively modest one.
N4P offers an 11 percent improvement in performance, a 22 percent improvement in power efficiency, and a 6 percent improvement in density over the original 5nm “N5” manufacturing process.
However, it is expected to get faster memory. Back in March, an Apple analyst said the iPhone 14 Pro models would get an upgrade from LPDDR4 to LPDDR5, a report today echoed by Digitimes. This is the faster memory that Apple uses in the M1 Pro and Max chips.
[That] should improve memory bandwidth, and some other improvements combined with higher peak frequencies could result in a 15 percent improvement in Apple’s performance.
Cross discusses possible ARMv9 support, but thinks it’s unlikely to make much of a difference before moving to GPU performance. He thinks a potential additional core, architectural improvements and access to faster memory will see the usual improvement here.
We think it’s reasonable to expect a 25 percent to 30 percent improvement in GPU performance, roughly in line with the last few A-series processors. You’ll see this especially in benchmarks and tests that are currently limited by memory bandwidth.
There’s one expected iPhone 14 Pro feature that will need all the processing power it can get: a 48MP camera sensor capable of 8K video. Both Kuo and fellow analyst Jeff Pu expect it to reach the main camera. Therefore, Cross expects most of the additional performance to focus on image processing and AI.
You can’t just throw in a 48MP sensor and call it. You need to have wider and faster data paths to the image processor. This image processor must be able to process four times as many pixels (or else the image processing takes four times as long, which is unlikely given Apple’s priority on camera responsiveness) […]
In other words, this new camera will likely require a much more powerful image signal processor and Neural Engine (special hardware for AI and machine learning tasks). I’m sure Apple will be happy to improve the Cinematic Mode introduced with the iPhone 13 Pro. It’s currently limited to 1080p, for example, but going up to 4K will require more image processing power. So would a more natural artificial bokeh or multi-object tracking. All good reasons for Apple to seriously improve the image processor and Neural Engine.
This is another area that would benefit from more memory bandwidth.
Moving from LPDDR4x to LPDDR5 will improve memory bandwidth by up to 50% and should have a positive impact on power efficiency as well. This doesn’t make any task faster in itself, it just gives more breathing room for high bandwidth operations like 3D graphics and image/video processing.
The whole piece is a good read.
Photo: Efe Kurnaz/Unsplash
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