Desktop CPU and GPU in a Mobile Chip
If Apple had called the A17 Pro M3 Light instead, it would have been warranted. While the CPUs in Apple SoCs have been truly desktop class for a while now, the GPUs, while superior to other ARM offerings, have lagged behind. That changes with the A17 Pro; the graphics core in this update fixes what was wrong with the existing A-series and Apple Silicon GPUs aka the lack of hardware ray tracing. With software ray tracing, Apple has tried to use brute force to maintain the graphic quality of modern 3D environments. Meanwhile, Nvidia has had hardware racing since the Turing-architecture GPUs in 2018 and AMD has had it since RDNA 2 in 2020. Intel’s ARC series and several ARM-based SoCs gained it last year in 2020. Ray tracing, especially in games, is a major reason why Apple’s charts compared to PC rivals have not met real-world performance.
The addition of hardware ray tracing made it possible to port AAA games like RE Village, RE4 remake, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and Death Stranding possible. The A17 Pro has a few other things up its sleeve as well. First, it's got a desktop-class neural engine twice as fast as previous iPhones. For gaming, this powers MetalFX upscaling and allows other Machine Learning/ AI tasks to be much faster as well. The CPU is now 10% faster and the GPU 20% faster, but both are more efficient allowing for not just burst power, but sustained operation without a fan. That last part may be as big as the hardware ray tracing. Let's look at how Apple could use this architecture.
A17 Pro Roadmap
The A17 Pro itself may not stay in the iPhone Pro alone. I would expect it in the next-generation iPad mini and possibly replace the M1 in the iPad Air as well. A higher-end Apple TV seems highly likely as well as it, combined with the tvOS features brought over from iOS and macOS would make it a very capable game console. Then there’s a wild card, there have been rumors of a less expensive education Mac to compete with Windows business models and Chromebooks. With 8GB of RAM, the A17 Pro would actually be perfect for such a computer, possibly based on the M1/ chassis. Education and possibly business customers are not likely to use all the features of an M-series chip and using Macs at school at work would make it easier to sell them at retail when the children are adults.
Then there are the next steps and why I think that this actually should have been called the M3 Light, this iPhone chip will lead the way to the M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max, and M3 Ultra in 2024. While they have promoted the Vision Pro as having an M2, I believe that the A17 architecture improvements make it more likely that shipping Vision Pros will join new MacBook Airs and iPad Pros in introducing the M3 in the spring.
Software Roadmap
Apple’s ultimate play here may be creating a platform not as a single device, but as the culmination of all its main platforms. Buying a game or other interactive program would give you it on not only the iPhone, but also iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and Vision headset. This could be further enhanced in the EU and other markets where sideloading and alternate stores will be allowed. In those stores, Steam, EA, or Epic could offer games across PC, Linux, and all Apple platforms. While the Mac is smaller, releasing a game across Apple platforms has a larger reach and could be more compelling to game devs.
The next 12 months will be very interesting in both hardware and software for Apple.
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