As part of Apple’s announcements on Tuesday, they spent considerable time talking about the silicon in the new iPhone 8 and iPhone X. It’s called the A11 Bionic. While there have been lots of chips in the A series from Apple, I'm not aware of them ever giving one a moniker, like “Bionic”. For someone of my age, the term bionic has a very particular cultural reference.

One thing is for sure, with six cores and all its other bells and whistles, the A11 is a screamer. Geekbench scores show it matching (more or less) the processing speed of the currently shipping 13-Inch MacBook Pro. That’s crazy.

I don’t think this means we’re going to see the A11 driving a Mac but I do think it is worth noting the crazy-fast processing speed these pocket computers are achieving. I also think this fast chip is really the foundation of many of the new features in the iPhone. So many of the new features, from photo processing to FaceID, all wouldn’t work without the A11.