It goes without saying that Apple’s A12 chipset that will probably find its way into 2018’s iPhones and iPads will be faster and more powerful than its predecessor. However exactly how much faster are we talking about? Apparently it will be about 20% faster and 40% more efficient, or that’s what the speculation is at the moment.How did we arrive on those numbers? According to TSMC (via Cult of Mac), they are expecting that the chipsets they manufacture this year to be based on the 7nm process, down from 10nm from the previous year. Because of this improvement, they claim, “Compared to its 10nm FinFET process, TSMC’s 7nm FinFET features 1.6X logic density, ~20% speed improvement, and ~40% power reduction.”
TSMC obviously does not mention Apple at all, but given that TSMC is supposed to be Apple’s main supplier of chipsets, it stands to reason why these improvements could also be applied to the A12. There’s no guarantee that it will, but like we said these are just natural improvements that most companies would make to their products.
Apple is expected to debut their new iPhones in the later part of the year, possibly around September. This means that we still have a bit of waiting to go before we get all the official details so until then take it with a grain of salt.