Apple TV 3.2 (2013) was launched in January with a new A5 chip that I have already told you in this article. The new component still amazes many people, but now it does so through the reduced current consumption and not through the greatly reduced size. If you look at the table above you will see as the new face A5 consumes up to 50% less current than the chip A5 from Apple TV 3 2012Sign that Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), worked seriously on improving the way the energy supplied to the processor and internal components is managed.
The power savings are nothing short of significant. The previous generation Apple TV wasn't really a power hog, with platform power maxing out at around 1.6W, but the new model tops out at just a watt. Overall the power savings seem to be around 800mW across the board. With no change to process technology, I can only assume that the reduction in power consumption came from other architectural or silicon optimizations. Assuming you're using the Apple TV for watching video 8 hours a day, every day of the year, you'd save about $0.26 per year on your power bill (assuming $0.11/kWh). You'd break even on the $99 cost of a new Apple TV in about 385 years. Maybe by then we'll actually have a true replacement to cable TV.
In the case of all tasks, the chip consumes much less energy and this gives us to understand that the autonomy of the battery of iDevices could significantly improve based on the evolution of the technologies used by Apple. Although in Apple TV no one will notice any difference in terms of energy consumption, everything that Apple has done now could pass to iDevices. Think of a face A7 which could consume up to 50% less energy, it being redirected to other new components or perhaps to an increase in battery autonomy.
Of course, a reduction in the consumption of an old chip does not necessarily mean a reduction in the consumption of future chips, but at least we have real reasons to hope that this will happen.
