The Apple A17 Pro is a 64-bit ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series, and manufactured by TSMC. It is used in the iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, and iPad Mini (7th generation) models and is the first widely available SoC to be built on a 3 nm process. This chip does not have a non-Pro variant, as Apple moved to the TSMC N3E manufacturing node technology and announced the A18 Series on September 9, 2024 through February 19, 2025, with the A18 and the A18 Pro respectively replacing the A15 Bionic (exclusively on the entry-level iPhone models with 5-core GPU), A16 Bionic (exclusively on the standard iPhone models with 5-core GPU) and the A17 Pro (exclusively on the premium iPhone models with 6-core GPU) on the new iPhone 16 lineup.
Design The Apple A17 Pro features an Apple-designed 64-bit ARMv8.6-A six-core CPU with two high-performance cores running at 3.78 GHz, and four energy-efficient cores running at 2.11 GHz. Apple claims the new high-performance cores are 10% faster due to its improved branch prediction, wider opcode decoder, and more powerful execution engines. The efficiency cores are claimed to be "3x more efficient" than the competition. The amount of RAM has increased to 8 GB, compared to 6 GB in the A16.
The A17 Pro integrates a new Apple-designed six-core GPU, which Apple claims is 20% faster than the A16 and their biggest redesign in the history of Apple GPUs, with added hardware accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading support. The 16-core Neural Engine is now capable of 35 trillion operations per second. The A17 Pro also added support for USB 3.2 Gen 2 (up to 10 Gb/s). The A17 Pro contains 19 billion transistors, a 19% increase from the A16's transistor count of 16 billion, and is fabricated by TSMC on their 3 nm N3 process.
The A17 Pro adds hardware decoding for AV1 video, and is the first Apple SoC with AV1 support.
Neural Processing Unit (NPU)
The A17 Pro's NPU delivers 35 TOPS (35 trillion operations per second), which has remained unchanged in the Apple A18. This is approximately 58 times more powerful than the NPU in the A11, which could handle 600 billion operations per second. The A11, introduced in 2017, was the first Apple chip to feature a Neural Engine.
ChipPower(TOPS)YearPower relativeto the A17 ProA11 Bionic0.620171.71%A12 Bionic5.0201814.29%A13 Bionic6.0201917.14%A14 Bionic11.0202031.43%A15 Bionic15.8202145.14%A16 Bionic17.0202248.57%A17 Pro35.02023100.00%
Products that include the Apple A17 Pro iPhone 15 Pro & 15 Pro Max – 6-core CPU and 6-core GPU iPad Mini (7th generation) – 6-core CPU and 5-core GPU
Comparison of A15, A16 and A17 Variant CPUcores (P+E) GPU Neural Engine Memory Process TransistorcountUsed in Cores EUs ALUs Cores Performance A15Bionic 5 (2+3) 5 80 640 16 15.8TOPS 4GB LPDDR4X TSMC N5P 15 billionApple TV 4K (3rd generation) 6 (2+4) 4 64 512iPhone 13 5 80 640 4–6GB LPDDR4XiPhone 13 Pro, iPhone 14, iPad mini 6 A16Bionic 17TOPS 6GB LPDDR5 TSMC N4P 16 billioniPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 15 A17Pro 6 96 768 35TOPS 8GB LPDDR5 TSMC N3 19 billioniPhone 15 Pro580640iPad Mini (A17 Pro)
See also Apple silicon, range of ARM-based processors designed by Apple for their products Comparison of ARM processors#ARMv8-A
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