Apple introduces the A13 Bionic for the iPhone 11

Apple is announcing new iPhone models today. The iPhone 11 uses an Apple A13 Bionic system-on-a-chip. It is a nice improvement over the A12 Bionic in the iPhone XR, XS and XS Max.

But how much faster exactly? Apple first said it is making the fastest GPU and CPU for a smartphone. It then showed two charts with no X-axis — those charts weren’t helpful. But later in the conference, Apple shared some details about A13 Bionic performance.

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VP of Silicon Engineering Sri Santhanam shared some details about the A13 Bionic. Everything has been optimized for machine learning. The CPU can do 1 trillion operations per second. The CPU, GPU and Neural Engine should work better together when it comes to performing machine learning tasks.

“The iPhone 11 Pro is the best machine learning platform in any smartphone” Santhanam said.

When it comes to architecture, Apple is using 7nm transistors (like on the A12 Bionic), and there are now 8.5 billion transistors — that’s a huge update compared to the A12 Bionic, which had 6.9 billion transistors. The A13 Bionic still has four high-efficiency cores and two high-performance cores.

The two high-performance cores are 20% faster than previous high-performance cores and consume 30% less battery. The four high-efficiency cores are 20% faster and consume 40% less power.

The GPU has been optimized for Metal. It is 20% faster and consumes 40% less power. And, finally, the neural engine has eight cores and is 20% faster while consuming 15% less power.

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The article has been updated with performance details about the A13 Bionic.