It is still early to confirm, but it is clear that the presentation of the new A15 Bionic chip mounted in the new iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro did not generate the wow effect that many expected. According to analysts at SemiAnalysis, the explanation should be looked at in two directions: Despite a drastic increase in on-chip transistors (from 11.8 to 15 billion), the major architectural innovations Apple planned this year may have been delayed until 2021.
In fact, many engineers have left the Cupertino company in recent years. We are thinking in particular of Gerard Williams, former Chief CPU Architect of Apple, who left the ship in 2019 to found Nuvia (later acquired by Qualcomm) with more than a hundred engineers.
Unfortunately, the goodbye went on. Recently, Rivos Inc, a new startup specializing in high-end RISC V chip designs, has also hired many senior Apple engineers.
However, this brain drain could have noticeable effects on the performance of future Apple SoCs. The A15 chip would be one of the first to suffer from this situation, the flaw of slightly modified cores compared to that of the A14 Bionic, launched last year on the iPhone 12/12 Pro.
“We think Apple delayed the next generation of CPUs because of the workforce reduction. Instead of a new CPU core, they opted for a modified version of last year’s core,” explains SemiAnalysis, quoted by WCCFTech.
To confirm this statement, even Apple during its keynote compared the performance of its A15 with that of its old A12 chip, launched in 2018 with the iPhone XR / XS.
Finally, remember that the processor of the new iPhone 13/13 Pro is not alone: even the SiP (System in a Package) of the Apple Watch Series 7 is strictly the same as that of the Apple Watch Series 6.