The A11 Bionic probably isn’t as good as Apple initially hoped

“Apple’s custom-designed A11 Bionic chip… is an impressive chip, offering solid improvements in CPU and graphics performance over its predecessor as well as enhancements that help boost battery life, camera and video image quality, and more,” Ashraf Eassa writes for The Motley Fool. “It’s a great engineering achievement on Apple’s part.”

“Despite that, I suspect that, thanks to issues with the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company 10nm technology that the chip is built on, Apple missed some of its performance targets for the chip,” Eassa writes. “In terms of generational CPU improvement, the A11 Bionic represents the smallest gain since the introduction of the A8. Generational GPU improvement for the A11 Bionic is the smallest in four generations, coming in even worse than the A8’s improvement.”

“I think TSMC’s 10nm technology simply didn’t deliver the kind of performance that Apple (and likely TSMC) had hoped for (something that industry analyst Daniel Matte believes to be the case), which ultimately forced Apple to run the A11 Bionic’s CPU and GPUs at lower frequencies than it had hoped,” Eassa writes. “The good news is that I think TSMC’s upcoming 7nm technology, which will almost certainly be used to manufacture most, if not all, of Apple’s upcoming A12 processors, will be analogous to TSMC’s 16nm technology — a technology that doesn’t deliver as aggressive an area reduction but enables a large performance boost.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: If “the A11 Bionic probably isn’t as good as Apple initially hoped,” we hope somebody sent several pallets of adult diapers apiece to the already hopelessly outmatched Qualcomm, Samsung et al.

A10 Fusion. A11 Bionic. A12 Thermonuclear?

If so, say hello to ProMotion displays in Apple’s next-gen 2018 iPhones.

For now, we’ll “settle” for Apple’s 10nm A11 Bionic which absolutely destroys all Android iPhone wannabes and even out-benchmarks Apple MacBook Pro!

With each passing year, and especially with iPhone X, it becomes increasingly clear – even to the Android settlers – that the competition has no chance of even remotely keeping up against Apple’s unmatched vertically integrated one-two punch of custom software and custom hardware. The Android to iPhone upgrade train just turned onto a long straightaway, engines stoked, primed to barrel away! — MacDailyNews, September 13, 2017

SEE ALSO:
iPhone 8’s Apple A11 Bionic chip so destroys Android phones that Geekbench creator can’t even believe it – September 30, 2017
Apple’s A11 Bionic chip is by far the highest-performing system on the market; totally destroys Android phones – September 19, 2017
Apple’s A11 Bionic chip in iPhone 8, 8 Plus, and iPhone X leaves Android phones choking in the dust – September 18, 2017
The inside story of Apple’s amazing A11 Bionic chip – September 18, 2017
Apple’s A11 Bionic obliterates top chips from Qualcomm, Samsung and Huawei – September 18, 2017
Apple accelerates mobile processor dominance with A11 Bionic; benchmarks faster than 13-inch MacBook Pro – September 15, 2017
Apple’s A11 Bionic chip in iPhone X and iPhone 8/Plus on par with 2017 MacBook Pro – September 14, 2017