Like when apple releases a new iPhone and there’s a new A17 bionic chip, or whatever they’re on now, how is it 40% faster than the last one? What did they discover in 1 year to make it faster? Why didn’t they make these changes in the last one??
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Generally speaking, we do not see CPUs “40% faster” than the previous generation. Marketing teams are very smart and know how to fudge numbers and make things more impressive than they actually are.
Each generation is iteratively better than another. There are a couple reasons for this.
1. Semiconductors (what the CPU is made of) are not manufactured by Apple. Apple *designs* the microarchitecture for these chips, but does not manufacture them. Companies like TSMC and Samsung actually manufacture these chips. The holy grail of semiconductor manufacturing is making transistors on the chip smaller. Why? Because smaller transistors require less energy, and you can pack more of them in the same area on the chip. It’s a win-win. However, the process of making transistors smaller is very difficult and takes a long time to research and develop.
2. Business leaders do not want to ship every new feature possible with every new product. It’s much better to release iterative improvements year over year to lengthen sales and provide reasons to upgrade every generation. If Apple played their whole hand all at once, they would have WAY too much demand for the newest and greatest iPhone, and then no sales in the next year. A calculated approach is much more stable. Right now, Apple executives are planning out the next 5-10 years in advance.
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