Apple is going to release the iPhone 16 series, which will (at least professional models) run on the A18 Pro chipset. The company has finally joined the AI race and developed some interesting AI features for future iPhones.
You may already be aware of the importance of NPUs (neural processors) in SoCs for AI-related tasks. Now, the latest news concerns the NPU capabilities of the Apple A18 Pro. According to the report, the NPU inside the Apple A18 Pro is more powerful than the Apple M4 SoC that powers the latest iPad Pro. Not to mention, the powerful NPU hints at decent AI performance in future iPhones.
Apple has long been creating the foundation for integrating AI into the iPhone
The NPU inside the A17 Pro chip that powers the iPhone 15 Pro models has 16 cores, and AI performance is measured at 35TOPS. For comparison, last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 offers 15TOPS of AI performance. We’ll have to see what Qualcomm manages to achieve this year with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 SoC.
The 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro released this year are equipped with the M4 chipset, which is based on TSMC’s 3nm process, and the NPU performance of this SoC is measured at 38 TOPS, which is slightly higher than last year’s A17 Pro. Now it is said that the new chipset for Apple’s smartphones will surpass the M4 in this indicator again. Nevertheless, the end-user experience or the implementation of specific AI functions depends on other aspects, such as the form factor of the device.
At the last World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple announced its contribution to the development of artificial intelligence – Apple Intelligence. It is integrated into iOS 18 system applications and the Siri voice assistant. Now, iOS 18 requires a chipset with a powerful GPU as Apple focuses on building as many AI features into iPhones as possible.
The A18 Pro’s NPU is said to be capable of exceeding 45 TOPS, which is higher than the most powerful NPU among current Windows AI processors for PCs, which is offered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite.
