The base model iPhone 14 (and its larger counterpart) is expected to stick with an A15 chip this year, while the Pro models get an A16. This suggests that the performance of the iPhone 14 Pro could be considerably better than the base models.
There’s a lot of speculation about what this could mean in terms of iPhone 14 Pro performance, but it’s possible to at least get a rough direction…
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 a performance boost, but a relatively modest one.
N4P offers an 11 percent increase in performance, a 22 percent improvement in energy efficiency and a 6 percent improvement in density over the original 5nm “N5” manufacturing process.
However, it is expected to get faster memory. In March, the Apple analyst said that the iPhone 14 Pro models would get an upgrade from LPDDR4 to LPDDR5, a report that was echoed by Digitimes today. This is the fastest memory Apple uses in the M1 Pro and Max chips.
[That] should improve memory bandwidth and some other improvements, combined with higher maximum clock speeds, could give Apple a 15 percent performance boost.
Cross talks about possible ARMv9 support, but thinks it’s unlikely to make much of a difference before moving on to GPU performance. Think a potential extra core, architectural improvements and access to faster memory will see the usual improvement here.
We think it’s reasonable to expect a 25% to 30% improvement in GPU performance, roughly in line with the latest 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 his analyst Jeff Pu expect this to come to the main camera. So Cross expects most of the additional performance to be focused on image processing and AI.
You can’t just throw in a 48MP sensor and call it a day. You must have wider and faster data paths to the image signal processor. This image processor must be able to handle four times the pixels (or take four times longer to process the image, unlikely given Apple’s priority on camera response) […]
In other words, this new camera will likely require a much more powerful image signal processor and neural engine (the dedicated hardware for AI and machine learning tasks). I’m sure Apple would like to improve the Cinematic mode introduced with the iPhone 13 Pro. It’s currently limited to 1080p, for example, but a boost to 4K would require more image processing power. So would a more natural artificial bokeh or multi-subject tracking. All good reasons for Apple to seriously improve the image processor and Neural Engine.
This is another area that will benefit from more memory bandwidth.
The move from LPDDR4x to LPDDR5 will improve memory bandwidth by up to 50% and should also have a positive impact on energy efficiency. This in itself doesn’t make any task faster, but instead provides more breathing room for high-bandwidth operations such as 3D graphics and image/video processing.
The whole piece is a good read.
Photo: Efe Kurnaz/Unsplash
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