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Apple is known for their sleek products and industry leading designs, but in the background, they are also one of the leading chip designers in the world. Their System-on-Chip (SOC) which runs their best selling iPhones are legendary, but Apple has been playing with and designing ARM chips far longer than you think. Here we study the evolution of the Apple A-series SOC which generally serves as the main processor for their iPhones, iPads and other devices.
In short, be prepared to be amazed by the leaps and bounds that Apple and their competitors have made in regards to what’s possible in a mobile phone chip.
Background history
For many, there is no real need to make your own microprocessor that powers your own product. Every other company, including Samsung, HP, Dell and even Google (until recently) relies on other people to make the chips that power their product. With good reason: designing and building chips is no easy task and it is best to leave it to specialists, because it is a very specialized job.
Apple, on the other hand, designs their own chip out of necessity. Apple did approach Intel to design and supply chips to what will eventually power their new product: a smartphone. Intel foolishly declined citing seeing no big future for underpowered handheld computers.
Apple, as always, is a company that is focused more on a long term vision than the rush to push features and products as fast as possible. So, designing their own chip is within their goals because they have a vision on the iPhone and they see no one will supply the right mobile chip to realized their vision.
Through a series of acquisitions, talent searching, hiring and polishing, they build their dream team and the result is their first Apple designed SOC which powers the first iPad: the A4 SOC. And of course, they don’t stop there. A new feature here and a performance improvement there results is the family of Apple Silicon that we see today.
Mobile Chip History
Over the years, Qualcomm of San Diego has been Apple’s biggest competitor in the chip designing space. So naturally, we track the progress between both and how well they did over the years.
Year | Apple | Qualcomm |
---|---|---|
2010 |
A4
|
S2
|
2011 |
A5
|
S3
|
2012 |
A6
|
S4 Pro
|
2013 |
A7
|
SnapDragon 800
|
2014 |
A8
|
SnapDragon 808/810
|
2015 |
A9
|
|
2016 |
A10 Fusion
|
SnapDraogn 820/821
|
2017 |
A11 Bionic
|
SnapDraogn 835
|
2018 |
A12 Bionic
|
SnapDraogn 845
|
2019 |
A13 Bionic
|
SnapDragon 855/855+
|
2020 |
A14 Bionic
|
SnapDragon 865/865+
|
2021 |
A15 Bionic
|
SnapDragon 888/888+
|
2022 |
A16 Bionic
|
SnapDragon 8 Gen 1/ SnapDragon 8+ Gen. 1
SnapDragon 8 Gen 2
|
Performance over the years



As you can see from the graphs, there has been a consistent trend. Apple tends to do well in CPU benchmarks while Qualcomm tends to do better in graphic benchmarks. What you didn’t see is how fast the performance gains over the years.
Despite what people think that peak-smartphone is coming, we still haven’t seen a slowdown of performance from either camp. And considering how the form factor and TDP of each chip is the same for years (around 5W to 8.5W), it is astounding how much performance each of them can squeeze from that small power envelope.
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Base | Pro | |
---|---|---|
iPhones | iPhone 14 / iPhone 14 Plus - (Amazon) | iPhone 14 Pro / iPhone 14 Pro Max - (Amazon) |
Watch | Apple Watch SE (Amazon) / Apple Watch Series 8 (Amazon) | Apple Watch Ultra (Amazon) |
AirPods | AirPods (Amazon) | AirPods Pro (Amazon) / AirPods Max (Amazon) |
iPad | iPad (Amazon) / iPad Mini (Amazon) | iPad Air (Amazon) / iPad Pro (Amazon) |
Laptops | MacBook Air (Amazon) | MacBook Pro (M2 Pro: Amazon) |
Desktop | Mac Mini (Amazon) / iMac (Amazon) | Mac Studio / Mac Pro |
Displays | Studio Display (Amazon) | Pro Display XDR (Amazon) |
Other Ecosystem Items
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