According to new analysis, Apple may have based its Apple S9 SiP powering the Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 on its A16 Bionic chipset. Manufactured using TSMC’s N4P process, the Apple S9 contains about 60% more transistors than its predecessors.
The Apple S9 system-in-package (SiP) has been available for a few months now, having been presented in September with the Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2. While the company discusses the Apple S9 on its Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 product pages, it provides hardly any technical details. Currently, Apple only mentions that the SiP has 5.6 billion transistors, a 60% increase over the Apple S8.
As a result, Apple boasts that the Apple S9 achieves a 30% GPU performance uplift compared to its predecessor, which works in tandem with a twice as powerful Neural Engine. According to analysis conducted by EETimes Japan, the Apple S9 and Apple A16 Bionic are one and the same. Unsurprisingly, the former is a considerably trimmed version of the latter, although the underlying TSMC N4P manufacturing process remains unchanged.
Specifically, Apple appears to have removed the two performance cores from the A16 Bionic, plus half of its efficiency cores. Leaving behind two efficiency cores, the Apple S9 loses four of the A16 Bionic’s five GPU computing units, as well as twelve of its four Neural Engine cores. Theoretically, the Apple S9 should still run more efficiently than the Apple S8, but this improvement is not reflected in the Watch Series 9’s or Watch Ultra 2’s official battery life estimates.
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