Fast Technology reported on Sept. 20 that the iPhone 16 will be equipped with Apple A17 chip.

It is reported that the Apple A17 chip is also based on TSMC's 3nm process, but it is slightly different from the 3nm used in the A17 Pro.

Specifically, the A17 Pro uses the TSMC N3B process. Compared with the N5 process technology, the logic density of the N3B process technology will increase by about 70%, the speed will be increased by 10-15% at the same power consumption, or the power consumption will be reduced by 25-30% at the same speed.

However, TSMC N3B has low yield and high cost, so it has N3E. N3E fixes various defects on N3B, the design index is also relaxed, and the cost is lower, but the performance is not as good as N3B.

Next year, iPhone 16 will use the N3E process, which is cheaper than the A17 Pro. Apple achieves chip differentiation through different processes. In this way, the gap between the standard version and the Pro version will be further highlighted.

In the past, the standard version of iPhone and Pro used the same chip, and later the standard version used the previous generation of Pro version. Now the appearance of the A17 Pro means that the standard iPhone will use a chip with a lower performance than the previous generation Pro version.