What is the difference between the Apple A16/M1/M2?

Apple's self-developed processor Apple silicon chips have formed a complete matrix. Specifically, the A-series processors are mainly used by the iPhone, the iPad is a mix of M/A series, and the Mac is a full range of M processors.

A-series processor model is relatively simple, updated every year a generation, the latest is the iPhone 14 Pro equipped with A16.

M series is more complex, with the new generation of Apple MacBook Pro last month to upgrade the chip to the M2 Pro and M2 Max chip, M family has as many as a dozen models (the same model also has a difference in the number of cores), it is not easy to distinguish.

Let's take a look at the differences in specifications and performance between them (the following tables are from Macworld and 9to5Mac).

I. Comparison of Geekbench 5 scores for all Apple processors:

Multi-Core Performance Comparison

Single-Core Performance Comparison

Obviously, the M1 Ultra (64 cores/48 cores) is still the most powerful, followed by the M2 Max (38/30 cores). The A16, the most powerful of the A-series, has only about half the performance of the M1 Max.

II. The iPhone Processor

Compare iPhone processor specifications:

iPhone processor Geekbench 5 multi-core benchmark comparison:

III. iPad Processor

Compare iPad processor specifications:

iPad processor Geekbench 5 multi-core benchmark comparison:

IIII. Mac Processor

Compare Mac processor specifications:

Mac processor Geekbench 5 multi-core score comparison: