Apple's next-generation A18 and M4 SoCs will reportedly feature an upgraded Neural Engine with more cores. The extra horsepower from the A18 chip will help the iPhone 16 deliver better performance on AI/ML tasks.
The powerful Neural Engine will help power the generative AI features rumored to debut in iOS 18.
A18's Neural Engine can significantly improve performance.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have placed greater emphasis on dedicated AI cores in SoCs for faster processing. This also allows devices to run many AI tasks locally.
Apple is already using the Neural Engine in its A-series and M-series chips to support on-device voice input, offline Siri, and other tasks on iPhones and Macs. But the Neural Engine will need a lot more horsepower to power iOS 18's rumored generative AI features.
The Economic Daily News report does not mention how many cores the A18's Neural Engine will pack. Apple has been using the 16-core Neural Engine on its A-series chips at least since the A14 Bionic in the iPhone 12.
While the core count remains the same, improvements to the underlying architecture have improved the performance of the Neural Engine. For example, the A17 Pro's Neural Engine can process 35 trillion operations per second. This provides up to 2x faster speeds than the A16's Neural Engine.
This same 16-core Neural Engine can also be found in Apple Silicon Macs. High-end models like the Mac Studio and Mac Pro use the more powerful M1/M2 Ultra SoC and therefore come with a 32-core Neural Engine.
A more powerful Neural Engine also helps future-proof the chip, giving Apple room to introduce more complex AI-based features in the future.
A more powerful Neural Engine enables offline processing of AI tasks
Flagship Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and Google Pixel 8 Pro feature upgraded SoCs that boast improved AI performance. However, they rely on the cloud to drive most of their AI functions.
Given Apple's typical privacy-centric approach, the company could use the A18's more powerful Neural Engine to power iOS 18's generative AI features offline.
TSMC will probably build Apple's A18 chip on the 3nm node. In addition to the upgraded Neural Engine, the chip should include faster CPU and GPU cores for better performance.