Apple’s A15 Bionic, powering the iPhone 13 series, iPhone SE, and the iPad mini 6, featured a 6-core CPU with two performance cores and four power-efficient ones. This time though, the company’s chip binning strategy may not be extended to GPU cores only because, according to the latest information, the same A15 Bionic running in the 2022 Apple TV 4K has a 5-core CPU, one less than what is present on Apple’s other devices.
Apple Using a Lower-End A15 Bionic, as the New Apple TV 4K Features Fewer GPU Cores Too
The TV Info app for tvOS provided valuable information surrounding the latest Apple TV 4K, which was eventually spotted by FlatpanelsHD (via MacRumors). Apparently, Apple has incorporated the device with a slower A15 Bionic, one that features fewer CPU and GPU cores. If you remember, the iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max shipped with a 5-core GPU, while the less expensive iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini had a 4-core GPU.
All four iPhone models were running the same A15 Bionic, but the differences were found through a little digging around. Of course, this difference in GPU cores meant that the faster chipset delivered a 55 percent graphics performance increase compared to the A14 Bionic fueling the iPhone 12 family. While the website does not provide additional information on how many performance and power-efficient cores make up the A15 Bionic, it does state that the 2022 Apple TV 4K is around 40 percent faster than the previous-generation model running the A12 Bionic.
In GPU performance, the new device is around 30 percent faster than its predecessor. Despite talking about this change, we would still like to do some due diligence of our own to see if Apple actually made any CPU changes to the A15 Bionic. If that is indeed the case, it means this strategy could branch out to other chipsets in the future, and that would make the performance results even more confusing and possibly mislead potential buyers if they do not thoroughly research their next Apple product.
In related news, the iPad mini 6 also features the same 4-core GPU as the latest Apple TV 4K.
News Source: FlatpanelsHD
