Insights from Apple’s supply chain, as detailed by Jeff Pu at Haitong International Tech research and reported by 9to5Mac, suggest that the upcoming A18 Pro chip will boast a larger die area compared to its predecessor, the A17 Pro. This expansion is likely to support enhanced AI computing capabilities.
The A18 Pro is expected to bring AI processing capabilities directly onto the device, a feature that leading Android devices have already achieved with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip.
With the increase in die area, the A18 Pro chip is poised to hold a greater number of transistors or specialized components, indicating a significant upgrade to the Neural Engine. For its 2024 iPhone lineup, Apple is planning to harness AI through a blend of on-device AI processing and potentially Google’s Gemini AI technology, which Apple is considering licensing.
In his memo, Pu specifically highlights the A18 Pro chip as having a 6-GPU configuration, thereby implicitly confirming the presence of a standard A18 chip equipped with a less powerful GPU.
This information aligns well with expectations that the entire iPhone 16 series will feature the A18 System on Chip (SoC), but with an interesting differentiation. The 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max models are set to be equipped with the AI-capable A18 Pro SoCs, whereas the standard iPhone 16 and 16 Plus models will be upgraded to the basic A18 chip.
This would be reasonable to expect from Apple as the company likes to limit all premium features to its Pro phones while the vanilla and Plus models will likely have to wait another year to get the full suite of generative AI features.
