Apple’s A17 chip for the iPhone 15 likely to focus more on battery life than performance improvements

The A17 chip expected to be used in the iPhone 15 may focus more on battery-life improvements than processing power, according to 9to5Mac.

Apple’s upcoming A17 chip (and M3 chip for Macs) will be manufactured based on Apple manufacturing partner TSMC’s enhanced 3nm process, according to Nikkei Asia. N3E is an upgraded version of TSMC’s current 3-nanometer production tech, which is only starting to go into use this year. The next generation of Apple’s M3 chip for its Mac offerings is also set to use the upgraded 3nm tech, according to Nikkei Asia.

According to TechRadar, when compared to TSMC’s existing N5 manufacturing process, the new N3 technology promises to increase performance by 10% – 15% (at the same power) or cut power consumption by 25% – 30% (at the same performance), and improve transistor density by up to 1.7 times for some logic structures, up to 1.2 times for SRAM cells, and only up to 1.1 times for analog structures.