The Apple A16 Bionic is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the iPhone 14 Pro (2022) models. It offers 6 cores divided in two performance cores (codename Everest, up to 3,46 GHz) and four power-efficiency cores (codename Sawtooth). According to Apple, the most improvements were made to the efficiency cores and the improved memory bandwidth (+50% thanks to LPDDR5). According to the die analysis from angstronomics, the e-core cluster still has the same 4 MB L2 cache, but the p-cores now offer 16 MB L2 cache. The SLC (System Level Cache) however seems to be reduced to 24 MB.
The Neural Engine still offers 16 cores and offers an increased performance of 17 TOPS (vs. 15.8 of the A15) for AI tasks. The integrated graphics engine still offers 5 cores and benefits mostly from the higher memory bandwidth. The new display engine supports adaptive refresh rates down to 1 Hz, the new always-on display, and improved anti-aliasing (for the dynamic island animations).
The CPU performance only shows small improvements to the last generation (Apple A15 Bionic). Still, the A16 Bionic is by far the fastest mobile CPU for smartphones and leaves e.g. the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 easily behind (in Geekbench 5.4 single- and multi-thread tests).
The chip is manufactured in the modern 4nm process at TSMC and integrates nearly 16 billion transistors (compared to the 15.8 billion of the A15 and 11.8 of the A14). Apple emphasized on efficiency and e.g. mentioned 20% power savings for the big performance cores and class-leading efficiency of the e-cores.
A16 Bionic
| Series | Apple Apple A-Series |
| Codename | Crete |
| Clock Rate | <=2460 MHz |
| Level 2 Cache | 20 MB |
| Level 3 Cache | 24 MB |
| Number of Cores / Threads | 6 / 6 |
| Transistor Count | 16000 Million |
| Manufacturing Technology | 4 nm |
| Features | ARMv8 Instruction Set, Machine Learning Controller, 16-Core Neural Engine, Secure Enclave, Advanced Image Signal Processor |
| GPU | Apple A16 Bionic GPU 5-Core |
| 64 Bit | 64 Bit support |
| Architecture | ARM |
| Announcement Date | 09/07/2022 |
