Sept 2025 Apple iPhone Event

The more I think about it, there more I see open questions. Why 3x matrix compute on Air but 4x on Pro, aren’t they using the same chip? Why no statement is made about the base A19? Why isn’t GB6 showing better results?

Maynard on MR had a similar speculation as me - that the additional FP16 pipe is used to accelerate matrix multiplications. This would result in 3x performance though. The math just doesn’t add up.
 
leman said:
The more I think about it, there more I see open questions. Why 3x matrix compute on Air but 4x on Pro, aren’t they using the same chip? Why no statement is made about the base A19? Why isn’t GB6 showing better results?

Maynard on MR had a similar speculation as me - that the additional FP16 pipe is used to accelerate matrix multiplications. This would result in 3x performance though. The math just doesn’t add up.
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What results would you expect?
 
Jimmyjames said:
You said “Why isn’t GB6 showing better results?” Better implies the results are less than you expected no?
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Ah, that’s what you mean. GB6 ML only shows 2x improvement and not 3x or 4x as advertised. So I see the double FP16 rate on general-purpose shaders but not the matrix-related improvements. This strikes me as odd, since I’d expect CoreML models running on the GPU to take advantage of the new functionality. After all, it’s Apple’s own framework.
 
leman said:
Ah, that’s what you mean. GB6 ML only shows 2x improvement and not 3x or 4x as advertised. So I see the double FP16 rate on general-purpose shaders but not the matrix-related improvements. This strikes me as odd, since I’d expect CoreML models running on the GPU to take advantage of the new functionality. After all, it’s Apple’s own framework.
Click to expand...
Ahh ok understood.

I hope it’s not like Apple mentioning 2x faster ray tracing that didn’t translate to 2x improvements in any ray tracing application.
 
Am I misunderstanding this? Is it saying nothing more than both the NE and gpu help with Ai etc? Or is there a link via the Neural Accelerators?
www.apple.com

Apple unveils iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max

Apple today introduced iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max with a striking new design that delivers a dramatic leap in performance.
www.apple.com
1757882679463.png
 
Jimmyjames said:
Am I misunderstanding this? Is it saying nothing more than both the NE and gpu help with Ai etc? Or is there a link via the Neural Accelerators?
www.apple.com

Apple unveils iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max

Apple today introduced iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max with a striking new design that delivers a dramatic leap in performance.
www.apple.com
View attachment 36576
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Sounds like they’re saying the hardware can work together, just marketing speak. The GM iOS release might reveal some other interplay via CoreML, but I won’t have time in the near future to RE. I’m sure someone out there will, though.

I seem to remember that they mentioned both more and faster memory in the event. Have any details emerged about the amount and speed of the LPDDR?

Edit: GB is reporting 12GB for the Air, Pro, and Pro Max. I was hoping for 16GB, but 12 should be pretty useful for me. I wonder what iOS 26’s memory footprint looks like.
 
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Altaic said:
Sounds like they’re saying the hardware can work together, just marketing speak. The GM iOS release might reveal some other interplay via CoreML, but I won’t have time in the near future to RE. I’m sure someone out there will, though.

I seem to remember that they mentioned both more and faster memory in the event. Have any details emerged about the amount and speed of the LPDDR?
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Thanks. Makes sense.
 
I came across some new info (including LPDDR specs) posted to wikipedia, but sadly sources weren’t cited. The user who posted it is KLPeople, who seems to also be a new-ish contributor to theapplewiki.com, so maybe it's legit. Here's the page revision where it was added: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_iPhone_models&oldid=1310589853

The newest revision claims the 17 Pro and Pro Max use LPDDR5X-9600, and the Air and 17 use LPDDR5X-8533. It also claims that the 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max support 4k external displays, but the Air has no external display support at all, which is pretty odd. I'm strongly considering the Air, so I'm hoping it's incorrect.

Edit: I also came across the attached image of the Air’s internals on MR. Also attached one that’s further translated.

Edit: Apple’s tech specs for the Air indeed doesn’t list DisplayPort, while it does for all of the other 17 models.
 

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diamond.g said:
Higher GPU clocks on the Pro cause better thermals?
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wccftech.com

A19 Pro, A19 Comprehensive Differences Show Major Contrast In SLC Cache, GPU Specs, Memory Frequency, Bandwidth And More

We take a look at the in-depth specification differences between Apple’s A19 Pro and A19, showing that despite both being 3nm chipsets, there are a ton of things that set the two apart
wccftech.com wccftech.com

Apparently I am wrong and the GPU is the same speed on all versions. So I dunno where the difference is coming from. Maybe the memory bandwidth?
 
Altaic said:
I came across some new info (including LPDDR specs) posted to wikipedia, but sadly sources weren’t cited. The user who posted it is KLPeople, who seems to also be a new-ish contributor to theapplewiki.com, so maybe it's legit. Here's the page revision where it was added: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_iPhone_models&oldid=1310589853

The newest revision claims the 17 Pro and Pro Max use LPDDR5X-9600, and the Air and 17 use LPDDR5X-8533. It also claims that the 17, 17 Pro, and 17 Pro Max support 4k external displays, but the Air has no external display support at all, which is pretty odd. I'm strongly considering the Air, so I'm hoping it's incorrect.

Edit: I also came across the attached image of the Air’s internals on MR. Also attached one that’s further translated.

Edit: Apple’s tech specs for the Air indeed doesn’t list DisplayPort, while it does for all of the other 17 models.
Click to expand...
The air’s usb port only supports usb 2 speeds.
 
I am a little confused, either I missed a step or jumped ahead, or they just decided not to. I had thought this was supposed to be the iPhone 25 on the A25 SoC (there was some talk that they were going to go to year-based model numbers). Did I hear wrong, or is that still in the pipe?
 
Yoused said:
I am a little confused, either I missed a step or jumped ahead, or they just decided not to. I had thought this was supposed to be the iPhone 25 on the A25 SoC (there was some talk that they were going to go to year-based model numbers). Did I hear wrong, or is that still in the pipe?
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They went with year-based versioning for the OSs. Hardware versions are still all over the place, e.g. iPhone 17 is designated iPhone18,3 with the A19 SoC which features the Apple10 GPU. It’s somewhat understandable because different units of hardware iterate at different rates and they don’t want their hardware to be perceived as old, but it sure makes referring to stuff error-prone.
 
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