Apple A17 Bionic to beat Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 in the 3 nm race

Qualcomm righted the wrongs of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 last year by moving to TSMC's 4 nm fab for the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 has been a resounding success as well, and recent reports claim the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 will outperform the A16 Bionic in the CPU department. It seems, though, that Apple will retake that lead with the upcoming A17 Bionic.

According to word coming out of China, Apple's next-gen chipset, the A17 Bionic, will be built by TSMC. That's hardly surprising, as recent Apple SoCs have all been built by the Taiwanese semiconductor company. The interesting part, however, is the A17 Bionic will be built on TSMC's 3 nm process, alongside the next-gen M3 chips. Supposedly, Apple has TSMC's 3 nm production capacity completely booked, leaving no room for Qualcomm and MediaTek.

What this means is that the A17 Bionic, set to power this year's iPhone 15 Pro models, will have a generational advantage over Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and MediaTek's Dimensity 9300. Qualcomm mostly managed to claw back the deficit in efficiency with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, but Apple will likely take back its spot at the top of the pile, at the very least until the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 debuts at the end of 2024.

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