A few days ago, we did an extensive and complete compilation of what we expect from the future iPhone 15, and of course, The Apple A17 Bionic SoC is something we can take for granted in two Pro models. As we told you a few weeks ago, this new chip from Apple, which will be produced for the first time at TSMC’s 3-nanometer node, promises a significant improvement in performance and efficiency compared to the Apple A16 Bionic, which is the “brain” of the current iPhone 14 Pro and, predictably, the future iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.

We told you back in January that we don’t expect this new SoC to be revolutionary in terms of its design, and that’s understandable, since the leap to the three-nanometer scale comes with it on top of that, making it far from the best time to the introduction of fundamental changes in architecture. However, a leap in scale will directly result in improved performance and efficiency which we expected to be bigger than what we’ve seen in previous generations of Apple’s SoC jumps for the iPhone.

Over the past few days, there have been some alleged leaks that have turned out to be false, namely They pointed out that the future Apple A17 Bionic could come very close to the Apple M2 in terms of performance, because only 7% would remain below it. Something completely surprising, given that we are talking about the SoC that is responsible for powering many of the company’s desktops and laptops. It sounds too good to be true… and of course it isn’t.

Today on WCCFTech we find an interesting article that details the reasons why last week’s fake leak made no bones about itand that we cannot expect such a significant improvement, which would leave even the second generation of Apple Silicon in a difficult situation.

According to the fake leak, the Apple A17 Bionic scored 3,986 and 8,841 in Geekbench 6, compared to 2,560 and 9,567 scored by the MacBook Air M2 in the same test. There we see a difference of just 7% in multi-core performance along with a whopping 55% difference in single-core mode. The difference in architecture could allow the real A17 Bionic to record a higher single-core score, although that remains to be seen, but there is one important aspect that the person who created the fake leak missed.

Since my partner Isidro has already advanced, we expect the Apple A17 Bionic to have a total of 6 cores, two high-performance and four high-efficiency, compared to the eight cores, four for performance and four for efficiency, that we found in the MacBook Air with the M2. Is it reasonable to expect that with this configuration there might be a difference in performance of only 7%? It is true that Apple has shown that it has excellent engineers, but there are certain limitations that are given by size, consumption, etc., which are indisputable.

There is no doubt that the performance of the Apple A17 Bionic will be remarkable, it may even be the best-performing SoC of 2023, but from here it is hoped that it will be able to come close to a tie with the next generation. SoC for laptops and desktops, he’s following a path that doesn’t really lead anywhere.