With the Samsung Galaxy S24 line and the Google Pixel 8 series both boasting serious AI skills, Apple has some catching up to do, but it sounds like the iPhone 16 line might be equipped to match or beat those phones when it comes to AI capabilities.
According to Taiwanese site Economic Daily News (via 9to5Mac), the Neural Engine in the A18 chipset that we're expecting the iPhone 16 line to use will have “significantly” more cores than the Neural Engine in the A17 Pro used by the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
The Neural Engine is a part of Apple’s chipsets that’s designed specifically to power AI and machine learning tasks, so it’s a key component of any big AI pushes Apple might make. As such, it would make sense for Apple to boost the number of cores available to the Neural Engine in its next smartphone chipset.
The site doesn’t say how many cores the A18’s Neural Engine might have, but the A17 Pro has 16, so it would be more than that anyway if this is correct. This would also be the first time Apple has increased the number of cores in its Neural Engine since the iPhone 12, so this could be the biggest jump we’ve seen in the iPhone’s AI capabilities in quite a while.
That said, the core count isn’t everything, as the A17 Pro’s Neural Engine is up to twice as fast as the A16 Bionic’s, despite featuring the same number of cores. We’d take this leak with a pinch of salt anyway, but we fully expect the A18 to offer significantly improved AI capabilities one way or another.
A Pro-only upgrade?
However, while some reports suggest that every iPhone 16 model will have an A18 chipset, it’s worth noting that in recent years Apple has reserved its newest chipsets for the Pro phones. We’ve also heard that some AI features might be exclusive to the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, which could mean the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus have a lesser chipset.
Whether that would be the A17 Pro that’s Apple’s current top smartphone chipset, or a lesser version of the A18 – perhaps one that doesn’t have as many Neural Engine cores – remains to be seen.
At the very least though it’s sounding increasingly likely that this year’s Pro models will have the hardware to match Samsung and Google’s AI abilities. Whether it will also have the software and features is less clear. We should find out in September, as that’s when the iPhone 16 line is likely to land.
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