According to Jeff Pu, an investment analyst responsible for companies within Apple's supply chain, Apple's next-generation A18Pro chip designed for the iPhone 16Pro model will use a larger chip size to improve artificial intelligence performance. In a research note this week with Hong Kong investment firm Haitong International Securities, Pu added that the A18 Pro chip will be equipped with a 6-core GPU, which is equivalent to the A17 Pro chip of the iPhone 15 Pro model.
It is rumored that iOS18 will provide new artificial intelligence-generated functions for a range of iPhone functions and applications, including Siri, Spotlight, Apple Music, Health, Messages, Numbers, Pages, Keynote, Shortcuts, etc. Apple has reportedly considered partnering with companies such as Google, OpenAI and Baidu to implement at least some of these features.
It is rumored that the iPhone 16 Pro models will use an upgraded version of the neural engine, and the number of cores will be "significantly" increased, which may cause some of the artificial intelligence generation functions of iOS 18 to be unique to these models. Pu has previously said that the larger chip size will be related to the neural engine, which can power generative artificial intelligence capabilities on the device.
Starting from the iPhone 12 series, Apple has used a 16-core neural engine. However, even if the core count remains unchanged, Apple is still improving the performance of the Neural Engine year by year. For example, Apple said that the Neural Engine of the A17Pro chip is 2 times faster than the A16 Bionic chip of the iPhone 14 Pro.
Apple has promised to unveil AI-generated technology later this year. iOS 18 will be previewed at Apple's WWDC in June, so we're only a few months away from learning the company's plans.
With the A17Pro chip, the graphics processing capabilities of the iPhone 15 Pro models have been significantly improved compared to previous models. Apple says the new 6-core GPU is 20% faster and more power-efficient compared to the 5-core GPU in the A16 Bionic chip. iPhone 15 Pro models also support hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading to improve graphics rendering, resulting in more realistic graphics in games.
Pu believes that Apple will continue to equip the A18Pro chip with a 6-core GPU, so this year’s iPhone16Pro models may have limited improvements in graphics processing.
Apple is expected to release the iPhone 16 series in September.