GPU
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Another highlight of the A17 Pro is the new GPU, which Apple calls “the biggest redesign in the history of Apple GPUs.” According to Apple, the graphics processor (GPU) in the A17 Pro chip has been completely redesigned and uses a six-core GPU. This new design has increased performance by 20% and at the same time consumes less energy than its previous generation. Simply put, the A17 Pro GPU helps games and videos run smoother and with more detail.
Featuring a unique hardware unit for ray tracing, this technique produces shadows and reflections 4x faster.
One of the strengths that Apple highlighted was the support of the A17 Pro GPU for hardware ray tracing. Focusing on improving the graphics in games, Apple provides realistic lighting of the rendered scenes with the help of ray tracing technique, thereby increasing the immersive experience in the game. The capabilities of this hardware unit are 4 times faster compared to software beam tracking.
Ray tracing is not the only new hardware part of this chip, but special units are also considered for Mesh Shading. A total of 768 shading units work together in 6 parallel groups of 128 to bring a pleasant experience of graphics to the user. Mesh shading also provides more efficient use of system resources and renders only the necessary parts of a scene in high detail, which improves performance and efficiency.
To highlight the A17 Pro’s graphics capabilities, developers such as CAPCOM have announced that the chip’s GPU has made it possible to play console-quality games, such as Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil Village, on the iPhone. This shows the high power of the A17 Pro GPU in playing heavy games with very high quality on mobile devices.
Apple has not only been able to increase the refresh rate of the display, but also reduced the consumption of its chip; Two conflicting goals are combined in one chip.
Apple’s success in achieving a refresh rate of 120 frames per second in the A17 Pro chip can display movements and transitions in a smoother and smoother way. Although increasing the frame rate increases the GPU’s power consumption significantly, Apple has implemented techniques to enable the maximum rate only when sudden changes are made by the user.
For example, when you are scrolling the page on Instagram, this rate changes according to the speed of touching the screen; Such measures are necessary in order to reduce energy consumption.
The A17 Pro chip brings improvements to the image signal processor (ISP), including a new photonic engine and Smart HDR 5. These features lead to improved photo and video quality compared to the A16 Bionic, delivering brighter, more detailed images with more natural colors.
Neural processor
The A17 Pro chip is not only superior in terms of graphics; This processor is very intelligent due to having a high-speed neural engine capable of performing 35 trillion operations. This powerful engine helps AI algorithms to do things like recognize images, understand speech, and create augmented reality experiences.
“Twice as fast as its previous generation”, a number that Apple is trying to boast about compared to the previous generation
The 16-core neural engine of this chip is twice as fast and can process up to 35 trillion operations. The chip also has dedicated hardware for ProRes codec acceleration, a display engine and an AV1 decoder.
This decoding technology is an advanced video compression protocol and was developed with the aim of increasing video quality while using less data. This technology will eventually make the streams smoother, increase the quality of video calls and optimize the use of mobile data plans.
According to Apple, the chip’s neural processing unit, which performs some artificial intelligence tasks such as speech-to-text, is up to twice as fast as the previous generation. This speed increase can process more tasks that require machine learning on the device itself and avoid sending personal data to the cloud.
Apple says that running Apple Intelligence on the iPhone requires at least the A17 Pro chip
The chip offers features such as auto-correcting texts to be more accurate, blurring the background in portrait photos, and creating personalized voices for people who have lost the ability to speak. In addition, the use of new MetalFX technology helps to improve the graphic details of video games without consuming too much battery.
