Apple manufacturing partner TSMC has reportedly started mass-production of the A11 chip that will power the iPhone 8.
The new chip is said to be based on a 10-nanometer manufacturing process, which should make it faster and more efficient than the 16-nanometer A10 Fusion in the iPhone 7.
Early benchmarks suggest it will be even faster than the A10X Fusion chip in the latest iPad Pros.
With less than two months to wait for the big iPhone 8 unveiling, manufacturers are ramping up their component production. They’ll be working to serve tens of millions of Apple fans, who will all be keen to get their hands on the company’s latest device as quickly as possible.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has now started mass-producing Apple’s next-generation A11 processor, according to a report from Taiwan’s TechNews, via Digitimes. This is expected to boost revenue by 10 percent in the third quarter.
Details about the A11 are unclear for now, but it’s likely to be the iPhone’s first 10-nanometer processor. The more advanced manufacturing process should lead to a faster chip that runs cooler than its predecessors, and saps less power.
According to one Twitter tipster, who goes by the name Ice Universe, the A11 achieves Geekbench scores between 4300 and 4600 in single-core tests, and between 7000 and 8500 in multi-core tests.
The reason for the differences is that the A11 was clocked at different speeds for each test, the tipster claims.
Apple A11 Geekbench4,：4600,8500 and 4300,7000，This is two different clock frequencies, and the final result may be between the two
— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) July 27, 2017
If this information is accurate, the iPhone 8 will be significantly faster than even the latest iPad Pros in single-core performance. It will also be more than twice as fast as the Galaxy S8, which achieves a single-core score of 1966, and a multi-core score of 6502.
Those new iPad Pros, which landed earlier this year, pack Apple’s first 10-nanometer chip, the A10X Fusion. As Apple is keen to remind us, it provides desktop-class performance in a mobile device, and allows for even greater multitasking in iOS 11.
