A close-up view of Apple’s A19 SoC

The A19 is a considerable refinement over the A18 in terms of chip construction, a microscopic view of the iPhone 17 SoC has demonstrated.

The iPhone 17 generation brought with it the new A19 and A19 Pro chips, which bring more improvements to Apple’s in-house chip design. While Apple makes claims about various performance improvements, photography of the new SoC design provides a visual indication of changes, if not a complete overhaul.

The shots by ChipWise show both the front and the back of the die itself, but the backside view is the most informative. The shots, the first high-resolution microscopy of the chip, provides a high-detail view of the chip’s layout, made using TSMC’s third-generation 3-nanometer process, N3P.

The initial remarks from ChipWise say that there’s a higher transistor density than the previous chip generation, complete with better energy efficiency. However, there are only “modest performance gains.”

The CPU continues to use a hybrid core design, mixing performance and efficiency cores. Upgrades are also visible for the GPU cores, which now include neural accelerators in both Pro and non-Pro versions of the chip.

Alterations are also spied in the image signal processor, display engine, and Neural Engine, which will aid on-device AI processing, imaging, and power management.

On a less detailed front, a comparison of the layout of the back of the A19 is relatively close to what is shown in the A18. All of the elements are in the same general regions of the chip layout, with Apple refining what is included in each area instead of rearranging any positions.

While impressive, the release of shots for the A19 are not accompanied by the A19 Pro, as seen with the A18 and A18 Pro in October 2024. At the time, the shots proved that Apple made two similar but different chip designs, instead of believing it was simply using chip-binned A18 Pro SoCs as A18.