The A16 Bionic chip cost Apple 2.4 times what it paid for the A15 Bionic
The new report says that Apple paid more than twice as much for the A16 Bionic than it paid for the A15 Bionic. If true, the company saved a ton of cash by breaking from tradition and equipping the non-Pro iPhone 14 handsets with the older SoC. Nikkei Asia says that for the 4nm A16 Bionic, Apple paid TSMC $110 for each chip. TSMC's N4 process node used to manufacture the A16 Bionic is actually an enhanced version of its 5nm node. Still, most of us media types refer to it as a 4nm chipset.
A lower process node means that smaller transistors are used and this allows a chip's transistor count to be higher. And the higher a chip's transistor count, the more powerful and energy-efficient it is. The A15 Bionic was made using TSMC's second-generation 5nm process node (N5P) and carries 15 billion transistors compared to the nearly 16 billion in the A16 Bionic and 11.8 billion in the A14 Bionic.
