The iPhone 15 will land during the back-end of 2023 and it is shaping up to be quite the update. But once again it could well be Apple’s CPU that steals the show – reports suggest it’ll be 30% more efficient…

When it comes to mobile chipsets – and Mac ones too – Apple has been something of a trailblazer during the past several years. Apple was the first to switch its phones from 32-bit to 64-bit, and it was the first to start making its own custom silicon for its Mac computers. And since about 2015, Apple’s chips have been the fastest chips in the mobile space.

Impressive stuff, indeed. The iPhone 14 isn’t due to land until the end of the year, but work is now already well underway on the iPhone 15 – Apple plans way into the future, as all phone and tech companies do. The iPhone 15 will, of course, run one of Apple’s A-series chipsets and it will most likely be called the A17 when it launches.

Making and designing chips isn’t easy; it requires a lot of money, a lot of know-how, and A LOT of engineers. Work is now underway on Apple’s A17 CPU at Apple HQ, and Apple’s engineers have been working with TSMC on a new 3nm fabrication process that will be used to produce the A17 CPU. All of Apple’s current iPhone 13 chipsets are based on TSMC’s 5nm process, so the A17 will be orders of magnitude smaller.

Apple’s A17 CPU For The iPhone 15

We already know that Apple plans on bringing its own, custom modems to either the iPhone 14 or the iPhone 15 – possibly both. But we now also know about some of the performance uplifts we can expect from Apple’s 2023 chipset, the A17. According to reports, the A17 will be 30% more efficient than Apple’s current A15 CPU and boast a 10% to 15% performance uplift.

The key thing here, however, is the A17’s efficiency improvements – 30% improvements on the A15 is no joke. And if the chipset is 30% more efficient, this will have a massive effect on things like battery life. The more efficient a chipset is, the less power it uses, and this, in turn, means your phone runs for longer on a single charge. It also opens the potential for reducing the size of the iPhone 15’s battery, although I hope this doesn’t happen.

TSMC’s 3nm technology (N3) will be another full node stride from our 5nm technology (N5), and offer the most advanced foundry technology in both PPA and transistor technology when it is introduced. N3 technology will offer up to 70% logic density gain, up to 15% speed improvement at the same power and up to 30% power reduction at the same speed as compared with N5 technology. N3 technology development is on track with good progress. N3 technology will offer complete platform support for both mobile and HPC applications, which is expected to receive multiple customer product tape-outs in 2021. In addition, volume production is targeted in second half of 2022.
TSMC

Need to know more about the iPhone 15? Check out our dedicated iPhone 15 Resource Page – it covers all the latest news, leaks, and updates in one place. And it is constantly updated too.