A17 Pro is the new 3nm chip of the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. Among Apple’s announcements as part of the “Voglia di marvel” event on Tuesday 12 September, the new A17 Pro chip, the first made with a productive at 3nm.
Apple and Qualcomm separated at home until 2026
The A17 Pro chip boasts 6-core CPU with 2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores
which promise improved performance compared to the previous generation. Apple reports that the new CPU is up to 10% faster thanks to microarchitectural and design improvements; the Neural Engine is listed as 2x faster. The GPU is 20% faster than the previous generation, and boasts 6-cores resulting in improvements in performance and energy efficiency.
Among the peculiarities of the A17 Pro, ray tracing at the hardware level, according to Apple up to 4x faster than software ray tracing.
The term ray tracing, we remember, refers to algorithms in the field of 3D computer graphics, in which the visualizations of scenes, mathematically modeled, are produced using a technique that follows the rays starting from the camera’s point of view rather than from the light sources. Thanks to ray tracing it is possible to obtain scenes with ultra-realistic lights, reflections and shadows, with advanced optical effects that accurately simulate reflections and refractions.
The iPhone 15 Pro promises smoother graphics, improvements for Augmented Reality applications and gaming; Various upcoming high-end games featuring console graphics were showcased as part of the new product presentation, including titles such as Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4, Death Stranding and Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
Apple reports that MetalFX upscaling combines the performance of the GPU and Neural Engine to create high-definition graphics effects using significantly less power. Speed and efficiency are – in Apple’s words – “at the top in the sector”.
The A17 Pro includes a ProPres codec, a ProDisplay “engine”, an AV1 decoder, and Apple reports that this last feature allows for more efficient and higher quality “video experiences” with streaming. This decoder should significantly streamline the work of the operating system, in terms of resources required for processing. Finally, Apple reports a USB controller that offers “USB 3 speed” (up to 10 Gbps using a suitable USB 3 cable) for the first time on iPhone, allowing higher-speed transfer of movies and video output up to 4K at 60 fps HDR.