The chip A16 Bionic with which it went on sale iPhone 14 Pro It was going to be much more powerful, but an engineering error ruined the plans of Apple.
According to a report from The InformationCrucial design mistakes late in development were detrimental to this goal, so the company had to go with an architecture similar to the A15 of last year’s model.
What happened to the A16?
The report notes that silicon engineers at Apple they were “overly ambitious in adding new features”.
The chip A16 The idea for the team was to keep a next-generation GPU with ray tracing technology, the technique that makes light in video games behave as it does in real life.
Software simulations had suggested it was feasible, and the company went ahead with prototyping. But the test hardware consumed more power than engineers expected, which would have affected battery life and overheated the device.
Because Apple caught the bugs late in development, had to scrap plans for this build and opt for the A16 that we currently see in high-end equipment.
The report’s sources described the error as “unprecedented in the group’s history.”
Problems in the division
The development team, also called Apple Silicon, seems not to have had just this problem.
Starting this year, in addition to fighting once morest the very limits of development of these technologies still governed by Moore’s Lawa lot of talent has been withdrawn to go to rival chip makers.
The company reportedly tried to limit the brain drain by showing presentations to engineers that highlighted the risks of working for chip startups, warning that most fail.
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