Like every year, Apple releases a new chip with the new iPhone. Chip has been introduced to the entire lineup on a trial basis. But this time, Apple has changed old habits with the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus. Instead of getting the latest chip, it got a single chip that was a generation old. The new chip may be called the A17 Pro and is only used in the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max 2024.
This is why we have seen Apple calling one of its smartphones “Pro”. It’s hard to foresee what this could mean for the future. The chip is built on a new 3nm manufacturing process this time. That makes it the first 3nm chip released in modern industry.
Apple A17 Pro 2024: Configuration
A17 Pro features a 6-core CPU configuration with two high-performance and four efficiency cores. Its integrated cores are capable of delivering performance at all power levels. Apple notes that they will be up to 10% higher CPU performance than last year’s A16 Bionic chip.
A few other special features on A17 Pro include a dedicated video engine for ProRes and AV1. A USB controller can also support USB3 and transfer data up to 10Gbps. The neural engine features 16 cores, making it twice as fast and capable of performing 35 trillion operations per second. This enables machine-learning tasks such as analyzing and indexing photos to be performed more quickly.
Its GPU has been further improved. It is given an extra core. It has a six-core design with additional support for hardware-accelerated ray-tracing. Apple says that peak graphics performance has been improved by up to 20% compared to last year’s A16 Bionic chip.
First 2024 Apple A17 Pro: Price, Release Date, Specs & Performance
| Description | Six-core GPU |
| Class | Mobile/Embedded |
| Total Cores | 6 Cores, 6 Threads |
| Primary Cores | 2 Threads, 2 Cores, 3.8 GHz Base, & NA Turbo. |
| Secondary Cores | 4 Threads, 4 Cores, 2.1 GHz Base, & NA Turbo. |
| Other names | Unknown CPU (iPhone16,2), & Unknown CPU (iPhone16,1). |
| CPU First Seen on Charts | Q3 2024 |
| CPUmark/$Price | NA |
| Overall Rank | 806 |
| Last Price Change | NA |
A17 Pro 2024: Performance Analysis
The “Pro” moniker may be well-deserved as Apple’s performance claims are spot on, and the A17 Pro is a beast. We found in the analysis that it is the fastest Smartphone chip currently available. CPU score on Geekbench 6 shows that the overall performance of the A17 Pro is about 10% better than that of the A16 Bionic. It was about 22% faster than its A15 Bionic.
Notably, its single-core scores were even higher than the new iPad Pro, which features a desktop-class M2 chip. A17 Pro is powered by Qualcomm’s latest and greatest – the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. A17 Pro has single-based core and multi-core performance, which was 47% and 38% better. The performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is comparable to the A14 Bionic, a chip from three years ago.
Geekbench 6 GPU benchmark, the graphics performance of the A17 Pro is about 20% better than the A16 Bionic. About 33% more than the A15 Bionic. M1 and M2 chips can perform significantly higher as they are provided with 8 and 10-core GPUs, respectively.
