Apple's next top model among the iPhone SoCs, the A18 Pro, is said to have significantly more performance in terms of AI functionality. In addition, the integrated Neural Engine supposedly gets significantly more cores and more space on the die, according to well-known analyst Jeff Pu, who specializes in companies in Apple's supply chain. In its latest report to investors, the market observer from the Hong Kong stock exchange Haitong International Securities suggests that Apple is once again increasingly relying on “on device” AI.
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Generative “On Device”-KI?
iOS 18 is said to be the first iPhone operating system to use generative artificial intelligence – probably in the form of an improved voice assistant Siri, chatbot functionalities and new AI features as part of the iWork office package, including possibly an image generator. Apple has been working on large language models that can also run locally for a long time. Recently, a new multimodal model called MM1 was presented, which is said to deliver good results despite comparatively few parameters. The group always aims to process as few AI functions as possible in the cloud – for data protection reasons. However, there were also discussions between Apple and external AI suppliers such as Google (Gemini), OpenAI (GPT-4+), Anthropic (Claude) and Baidu (Ernie Bot).
The A18 Pro is to be installed in the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, the manufacturer's next top smartphone models, which will be released in September. Pu also reports that the GPU cores will probably remain at the current level (6 pieces). However, the SoC area should still be more powerful overall. Most recently, Apple increased the GPU performance of the iPhone 15 Pro by a good 20 percent (6 instead of 5 cores as in the iPhone 14 Pro). The A17 Pro already had a Neural Engine AI performance that was supposedly up to double that of the A16 Bionic from the iPhone 14 Pro.
iPhone 16 and 16 Plus with A18 – without Pro
It remains unclear what Apple's next SoC will do in its standard iPhones. This is supposed to be the first time in years that the same basic model will be used – instead of the generation from the previous year. This means that iPhone 16 and 16 Plus would come with the new A18, a slimmed down version of the A18 Pro.
Apple could delete cores here (particularly GPU and high performance), as is known from the various Mac SoCs (M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max). Hopefully the manufacturer will not slow down the AI functions, which will become an important selling point of the next iPhone generation.
(bsc)