Apple A16 Bionic: The iPhone 14 Pro Max and iPhone 14 Pro are powered by the new A16 Bionic chipset from Apple. And as a new chipset, more is expected from the iPhones powered by the chipset. Now, the A15 Bionic chipset is already a great chipset and the new A16 Bionic takes the performance and power efficiency of its predecessor to the next level.
There are very few details released by Apple about the Apple A16 Bionic chipset. But as curious as we are, our team did some digging and found some useful information about this new chipset. And from the information gathered so far, the A15 Bionic chipset features new CPU cores and is focused more on power efficiency. So, here are what we know so far about the Apple A16 Bionic SoC.
See Also: Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max vs Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra: Which is better
Apple A16 Bionic
CPU and GPU
The Apple A16 Bionic chipset has a 6-core CPU (Hexa-core) and 5-core GPU (Apple graphics). The CPU has two high-performance Avalanche cores and the speed of the Avalanche performance cores is 3.46GHz. The CPU also has four power efficiency Blizzard cores with an unspecified speed but if we’re to guess it’ll be between 1.8GHz and 2.00GHz.
The GPU of the A16 bionic chipset is the Apple GPU (5-core graphics). This is most likely the same GPU used in the A15 Bionic chipset. Although the GPU of the new chipset might be the same as the previous A15 Bionic chip, the high-performance cores saw about a 7% increase in speed (from 3.23GHz to 3.46GHz).
According to Apple, the CPU performance of the A16 Bionic is about 20% better than those of the A15 Bionic and other Android chipsets from the likes of Qualcomm and MediaTek. The 7% increase in CPU speed of the high-performance cores is enough ground for this claim judging by the fact that the CPU of the older A15 Bionic chipset is faster than chipsets from other companies.
See Also: Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 vs Apple A15 Bionic: Which is Better?
Fabrication, NPU, Transistors, and ISP
The new Apple A15 Bionic is built on a 4nm process technology. According to Apple, this chipset is not only faster but also more power efficient. This means more battery life and Apple iPhones powered by this chipset won’t face throttling when playing graphics-intensive games.
The numbers of transistors in this chipset are about 16 billion. This is a 6.25% increase when compared to the A15 bionic chipset. The NPU on this new chipset is also capable of doing 17 trillion operations in seconds and this is the fastest in an iPhone yet. A16 bionic also comes with a new custom ISP that Apple referred to as Photonic Engine.
See Also: Samsung Exynos 2200 vs Apple A15 Bionic: chipset comparison
Connectivity
Apple A16 Bionic has support for lots of wired and wireless connectivity options. It has support for 5G with the X65 MODEM which has a peak download speed of 7.5Gbps. Other connectivity options include NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS, Ultra Wideband (UWB) support, Emergency SOS via satellite (SMS sending/receiving), Apple Pay (Visa, MasterCard, AMEX certified), etc.
Camera Features
The A16 Bionic chipset comes with a custom Image Signal Processing (ISP) referred to by Apple as Photonic Engine. This ISP supports 48MP camera sensors and allows the front and back camera of the iPhone using this chipset to record steady 4K videos @24/25/30/60fps and also support Cinematic mode (4K@30fps).
This chipset can not record videos in 8K resolution and this might be one area where chipsets from Qualcomm and MediaTek seem to have an edge. Other camera features for photography and videography supported by this chipset are Dual-LED dual-tone flash, HDR (photo/panorama), 10-bit HDR, Dolby Vision HDR (up to 60fps), ProRes, and stereo sound rec.
See Also: Apple A15 Bionic vs MediaTek Dimensity 9000: chipset comparison
Geekbench Score
The single core score of the A16 Bionic chipset tested on the iPhone 14 Pro Max is 1887 while its multi-core score is 5455. This puts it as the chipset with the best CPU cores in a smartphone yet.
Apple A16 Bionic chipset: Summary
| CPU 1 | 2×3.46 GHz Avalanche |
| CPU 2 | 4×2.00 GHz Blizzard |
| GPU | Apple GPU (5-core graphics) |
| Fabrication | 4nm Process Node |
| 5G MODEM | X65 MODEM |
| Transistors | 16 Billion |
| NPU | 17 trillion/sec |
| ISP | Photonic Engine |
| Camera | Up to 48MP |
These are the details we have so far on the Apple A16 Bionic chipset. It seems the chipset is more focused on power efficiency and this in turn will lead to iPhones powered by this chipset having an optimum performance for a longer time.
Are there other details you feel we missed? We’d love to update this content if you have useful links and relevant information. Please don’t hesitate to send us a message using the Contact Us page if you have useful information about the Apple A16 Bionic chipset.
First of all – the core names are not Avalanche and Blizzard. Those are names for A15.. second the modem is X65 and not X60
Keks thank you for the feedback. We’ve updated the MODEM details but can you please confirm the names of the processors if they’re not called Avalanche and Blizzard? We’d appreciate that
Thank you once again.
Every new generation Apple A SoC have new architecture/cores/names. Right now the core names are unknown. That will change when the phone it’s released.
Okay Keks, thank you for the feedback. We thought you already knew the names. We’re referring to the CPU using the previous words for a few reasons.
One, the number of GPU and CPU cores are the same as the predecessor, and the jump in performance and transistor count is not as significant as we’ve seen in previous upgrades and two, we have to call them something until the new names are released. So, when the new names for the CPU are confirmed, we’ll update the article accordingly.