Alleged Apple A12 Bionic iPhone Chip Torches Geekbench With Smokin' Multi-Core Performance

Time and again, we have seen Apple do more with less when it comes to its custom mobile processors for iPhone and iPad devices. The company's hardware products often trail the competition in specs, but lead or otherwise offer performance parity to the competition. A new leak suggests that will again be the case when Apple's A12 processor arrives.

Prominent leaker Ice Universe claims to have some inside information on the A12 chip, including preliminary Geekbench scores. In a post on Weibo, he said the A12 scored 4,690 in Geekbench's single-core test, and 12,908 in the multi-core portion of the benchmark. The latter is particularly impressive, if it in fact holds true when the A12 ships.

To put those scores into perspective, we plotted them in a graph with our own collection of benchmarks. As you can see above, the alleged multi-core score of the supposed A12 chip is well ahead of the competition. It is around 20 percent faster than the current generation A11 Bionic found in the iPhone X, and a whopping 35 percent faster than Samsung's flagship Galaxy S9+ handset.

Of course, we do not know if the scores are legitimate. However, it's not like a 20 percent bump over the current generation is outrageously unattainable. Historically, Apple has done a good job improving performance with each new generation of its mobile processors. There is a lot of work that goes into their design—they are typically the result of a three-year development cycle.

The Apple A12 processor has a very powerful GPU

— Ice universe (@UniverseIce) August 13, 2018

In a separate post, on Twitter, Ice Universe stated the GPU in Apple's next-generation custom chip is "very powerful." Unfortunately, he did not provide any benchmark data, or any data at all to go with that claim. As a point of reference, Apple designed a three-core GPU for the A11 Bionic SoC that delivers up to 30 percent faster graphics performance than the previous generation A10.

Part of Apple's focus with the iPhone 8 and iPhone X was on augmented reality (AR) experiences. We might see more of that with its next-generation models featuring an A12 chip inside. Artificial intelligence (AI) could also play a prominent role.

We will find out soon enough—Apple is expected to unveil its next round of iPhones in September or October.