Apple is set to unveil the new iPhone X, the iPhone 8, and the iPhone 8 Plus in a big bang event tonight. You can watch the live stream of that event. Now, we have come across certain reports that the A11 chipset, powering the devices, will be Apple’s most powerful processors ever. Since the Gold Master version of the iOS 11 has now been leaked, apparently by a disgruntled employee, we have also got to know that this processor will have six cores.
We had yesterday informed you of the many features of the latest iPhone range. What the Gold Master or GM version of the iOS 11 shows is that the new A11 processors have six cores. Of these, two cores are called Monsson while the remaining four are called Mistral. The Monsoon cores are adept at handling more complicated and energy depleting tasks like gaming as well as video manipulation. The four Mistral cores will be able to handle all of the ‘lighter’ stuff like texting as well as checking your email, among other things. We had earlier mentioned that this year’s iPhones would have the A11 chipset.
This type of chipset architecture is different from last year. Last year’s Apple chipsets were the A10 and A10X, the latter of which was released earlier this year. The A10 chip comes with two high-powered cores besides two high-efficiency cores, which made it a quad core processor. On the other hand, the A10X chipset, used on the iPad Pro, has three high-power Hurricane cores complementing the three high-efficiency Zephyr cores.
What makes this year’s chipsets special is the fact that all of the cores of the CPU can be made to run independently. This means that both power and energy efficiency will be maintained and the energy and power allocation will be made depending on the nature of the task. The A10 range did not have this functionality: at any given time, either the high-performance or the high-efficiency cores could be run, and not both. This makes them better equipped to handle tough processing challenges.