Apple plans to use a new generation of A-series chipsets for the iPhone 16, noting the difference from recent cases of fragmentation of processing power. Unlike the iPhone 15, which uses the iPhone 14 Pro chipset, and the iPhone 15 Pro received the faster Apple A17 Pro chip, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro will be equipped with the latest A18 series processors.
The A18 chips are manufactured using TSMC's next-generation 3nm technology, which has prepared Apple for one of the biggest software changes in the last ten years. This will also affect the performance of the new chips as competitors are actively incorporating artificial intelligence into their phones, forcing Apple to integrate a more powerful machine learning co-processor into the A18. To uphold its reputation for privacy and security, Apple also needs to do a lot of its AI processing on the device itself, so the A18 will have features to match those requirements.
Despite this, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro may differ in computing power even within the new A18 chipset. It is known that the iPhone 16 will be equipped with a less powerful chip. In particular, the iPhone 16 Pro will receive a configuration with 2 high-frequency cores (possibly up to 4.05 GHz) and 4 mid-range cores, and its graphics subsystem will have 6 graphics cores. For comparison, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus will have 5 graphics cores and a reduced cache size compared to the Pro models.
Expected specifications of the Apple A18 processor:
- Performance: 2 cores at 4.05 GHz + 4 effective cores
- Graphic processor: 6-core (5-core for iPhone 16)< /li>
- Manufacturing process: TSMC 3nm N3P (N3E for iPhone 16)
Comparative performance of A18 vs A17:
- CPU speed: 5% faster
- Graphic performance: 30% faster
- Power consumption: reduced by 10%
- Geekbench results: 8571 vs 7288
Apple is also working on its own machine learning language model called Ajax for iOS 18, which will be used to handle artificial intelligence on the device. This home solution promises to be an important part of the new A18 series, which will be presented together with the iPhone 16 on September 10.