Apple today announced the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max at its “Wonderlust” event, and the new high-end iPhones introduce the next-generation A17 Pro chip. In addition to the expected performance boost, the A17 Pro introduces other features like a 6-core ray-tracing GPU, a 3nm node process, next-gen Neural Engine, and more.
Apple says the new processor is denser than ever thanks to the smaller node, packing in a total of 19 transistors. The all-new 6-core CPU packs two high-performance cores and four efficiency cores. The A17 Pro’s high-performance cores are 10% faster than before, according to Apple’s calculations. The 6-core GPU supports hardware-accelerated ray-tracing for the first time ever on an iPhone and is 20% faster than the GPU on the A16 Bionic. The Neural Engine is significantly faster too, up to 2x faster than prior A-series chips with 35 trillion operations per second.
So how does the A17 Pro stack up to older Apple chips? At a glance, the A17 is Apple’s first iPhone chip with a 6-core GPU, an extra core over the A16 Bionic on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus. The new chip also supports USB 3 transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps, a first for the iPhone.
Discover new horizons, always connected with eSIM
Travel the world stress and hassle-free with the best eSIM service available. Enjoy unlimited data, 5G speeds, and global coverage for affordable prices with Holafly. And, enjoy an exclusive 5% discount.
| A17 Pro | A16 Bionic | A15 Bionic | |
| Transistor count | 19 billion | 16 billion | 15 billion |
| CPU | 6-core CPU, two high-performance cores, and four high-efficiency cores | 6-core CPU, two high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores | 6-core CPU, two high-performance cores, and four high-efficiency cores |
| GPU | 6-core with support for ray tracing | 5-core | 5-core / 4-core |
| Neural Engine | 16-core, 35 trillion operations per second | 16-core, 17 trillion operations per second | 16-core, 15.8 trillion operations per second |
| Node process | 3nm | 4nm | 5nm |
The A17 Pro signifies Apple’s lead over competing Android smartphones, whose chips are not expected to switch over to the 3nm process till next year at the earliest. A17 Pro also includes a dedicated AV1 decoder for video streaming, and enabled advanced computational photography for the iPhone 15 Pro’s camera system.
