Apple iPhone 13’s A15 vs iPhone 12’s A14 processor battery and performance gains
As a rule of thumb, those second-gen tapeouts further refine the gains achieved with the first generation, as happened with the 7nm process, rather than introduce some breathtaking technology jumps which are getting harder and harder with each production node shrink.
During the N5P introduction to investors, TSMC stated that the second generation process node will let manufacturers pick either a a 15% better power efficiency, or 7% performance boost.
That is why Apple usually opts for efficiency rather than performance gains within different generations of the same processor nodes, so we can expect a very modest bump in the Apple A15 vs A14 performance scores, and a more significant 10-15% power draw reduction.
It’s a constant tradeoff that phone makers have now become very accustomed to, as each subsequent mobile generation lets them pick between raw power or power draw optimization, and they meet somewhere in the middle since phones are already fast enough for anything you throw at them.
The report also states that TSMC is ready to start a new 4nm node that will begin risk production in by the end of this year, and will see mass volume in 2022. It is rumored to be for the Apple M2 laptop, however, rather than the iPhone 14 but there’s plenty of time for Apple to decide.
