As Apple readies the iPhone Xs and iPhone Xs Max for sale next week, performance comparisons between the A11 (found in iPhone X) and the A12 (coming in iPhone Xs, iPhone Xs Max, iPhone XR), are starting to appear online.
Today, Geekbench scores and comparisons against the outgoing A11 processor have been made available. Initial scores seem to indicate that this year’s A12 processor seems to be heavily focused on single-core performance and efficiency across the board.
Multi-core performance seems to be either on-par or worse in some tests versus the A11 chip. Of course, scores will vary from test to test, and it’s unclear which model iPhone Xs is being used to test, with just an “iPhone 11,6” identifier listed.
Aside from scores alone, the Geekbench results reveal some new details regarding the new processor. The A12 processor will sport a 6-core design clocked in at 2.49GHz vs the 2.39GHz on the A11. It also tells us that at least one of the new phones will have 4GB of RAM, as well as a bigger L1 cache, jumping from 32KB to 128KB.
Interestingly, one of the Geekbench results we found mentions an iOS 12.1 update, which is currently unavailable in any form to developers, public beta tester, or the general public.
As always with Geekbench scores of unreleased iPhones, take them with a grain of salt. There’s a pretty good chance that these results could be faked. However, if true, it looks like the A12 will be an incremental update, processing power wise, to the A11 Bionic.
