Apple Compared Its A18 Chipset With A Two-Generations Old A16 Bionic, Hinting At The Lack Of A Notable Performance Difference With The A17 Pro

The iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus were just announced, with one of the biggest highlights of both handsets being that they come powered by Apple’s newest A18 chipset. It is mass produced using TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process, meaning that it is slightly better than the A17 Pro that was found in last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. However, when doing a direct CPU and GPU comparison, Apple chose to include a much older A16 Bionic. While we will discuss why the company possibly made this decision, let us take a look at how accomplished the A18 is.

A16 Bionic was likely included in the comparison because there is not a whole lot of a performance difference between the A18 and A17 Pro

First, let us review the specifications of the A18. The SoC features a 6-core configuration with two performance and four power-efficiency cores. It also features a 5-core GPU, along with a 16-core Neural Engine that will be responsible for running Apple Intelligence’s cloud-based and on-device generative AI features while being twice as fast for machine learning. The A18 also features 17 percent more memory bandwidth and can deliver the same performance as the iPhone 15 while consuming 30 percent less power.

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According to the graphs shared by Apple, the company reveals that on the CPU side of things, the A18 is up to 30 percent ahead and up to 40 percent faster in GPU tests. What piqued our curiosity was that the A17 Pro was never a part of this performance comparison, suggesting that there might not have been a significant difference between the two chipsets. This revelation should not be unusual to those who have been watching Apple’s keynotes for a few years now because the technology giant has a habit of comparing its new silicon with those it announced a few years ago to make it appear that there is a bigger performance and efficiency delta than it actually is.

However, a clever move made