- TSMC has revealed that its first 5nm chips will start appearing on phones this fall, and the iPhone 12 should be the first phone.
- Thanks to the 5nm process, the new Bionic A14 chip should be able to provide at least 15% faster performance while using 30% less energy.
- The additional performance will allow Apple to offer better AR performance, while the efficiency gains could offset the rumored smaller iPhone 12 batteries.
Apple’s iPhone 12 is configured to have the fastest and most efficient chip the company has ever designed, thanks to a 5-nanometer process.
Apple has not disclosed any specifications for its next-generation A-series chip, but PhoneArena spoke to TSMC, which is Apple’s main chip-making partner, and revealed that it is building an upcoming 5nm chip. Given that the TSMC makers have the A-series chips and that the iPhone 12 will be out this year, PhoneArena postulated that the chipmaker must be referencing the A14 Bionic.
If the 5nm chips TSMC is producing are for the iPhone 12, then we can expect the A14 to be not only more powerful but also more efficient. According to the PhoneArena report, TSMC’s 5nm technology “is approximately 15% faster, but uses 30% lower power than the current 7nm node found in the Snapdragon 865+ or Apple A13.”
Currently Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 865 and its upcoming Snapdragon 865 Plus, which is designed to be featured on the Samsung Galaxy Note 20, is built on the 7nm process node. The Snapdragon 865 is an impressive top-of-the-line chip, but Apple’s A14 should beat it if it moves at 5nm.
The Bionic A13 chip found in the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro, as well as the iPhone SE 2020, often already exceeds the Snapdragon 865 benchmarks. Therefore, it is likely that a more powerful A series chip have the best Qualcomm silicon on the ropes.
And it would also mean that the iPhone 12 could be the first phone to have a 5nm chip at its core. That’s a big step that even Huawei, which is working on a 5nm Kirin chip, has yet to do.
All this will translate into a more powerful iPhone, but it does not greedily suck the battery life. In real-world use, the difference between an iPhone 12 and an iPhone 11 in everyday tasks is not likely to be day and night. But a faster chip could result in better performance in demanding mobile gaming, and the extra power could be used to deliver better computational photography results and boost augmented reality performance.
Speaking of which, with the iPhone 12 Pro Max hoping to have a LiDAR scanner like the iPad Pro 2020, the added power could really enhance the AR experience that the phone could offer. Sadly, it seems that LiDAR will be limited to that phone only as the iPhone 12 Pro is expected to come with a trio of rear cameras – a combination of main, ultra-wide, and telephoto sensors like its predecessors, but with upgraded sensors.
The claimed battery sizes of the iPhone 12 models have also been leaked and are disappointingly small. But if the A14 is more efficient, it could extract much more life despite its size.
The iPhone 12 is expected to launch around September, so we’ll know what came out of the rumor and came true and what didn’t.
