Apple Debuts Three Custom Chips

AirPods' W1 is company's first wireless SoC

By Rick Merritt, EETimes,SAN JOSE, Calif., Sept. 07, 2016 – 

Apple's products announced today pack at least three new chips including its first wireless SoC to date, showing the company's increasing silicon prowess.

The company's largest and most complex effort remains the iPhone application processor. The 64-bit A10 Fusion in the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus packs 3.3 billion transistors.

The SoC adopts ARM's Big.little approach, using two high performance cores running 40% faster and two high efficiency cores at one-fifth the power consumption of the A9 SoC in the iPhone 6. It also sports a six-core GPU that's 50% faster than graphics in the A9.

"It's the most powerful chip in a smartphone," said Apple Vice President of marketing Phil Schiller, although companies including Mediatek and Samsung are shipping apps processors with eight or more cores.

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