The SoC A18 Pro in the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, Explained: This Tiny but Mighty Beast Is at the Heart of Apple’s AI

The recently announced iPhone 16 lineup is equipped with the new A18 SoC. Leaks accurately predicted that the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max would feature the A18 Pro chip. However, no one expected that Apple would also incorporate the A18 SoC into the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus. In any case, the partnership between the tech giant and the Taiwanese company TSMC has played a crucial role in the development of these new SoCs.

In 2021, Apple accounted for 26% of TSMC’s revenue, and it’s likely that this percentage has remained consistent. TSMC prioritizes Apple as a key customer, providing it with access to the most advanced lithographic nodes ahead of other clients. While the A18 Pro SoC seems impressive on paper, we need to examine it more thoroughly to evaluate its capabilities accurately. In this post, we’re going to break it down.

An SoC Designed to Support Apple’s Artificial Intelligence

If you look at the specs table below, you’ll notice that the A18 Pro and A17 Pro chips appear to be essentially the same. However, in reality, they aren’t. The SoC in the new iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max has been manufactured using TSMC’s second-generation 3 nm lithographic node (N3P), while the A17 Pro processor in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max comes from the first-generation 3 nm node (N3). Though these integration technologies may seem to have little difference, in truth, there are significant variations.

The theoretical increase in power in Apple’s new SoCs is primarily aimed at supporting Apple Intelligence, the artificial intelligence that the company is introducing in its new smartphones. It’s worth noting that the N3P lithography includes optimizations that don’t exist in the N3 node. Additionally, the A18 Pro SoC employs faster transistors and incorporates a new microarchitecture, making it more efficient than the A17 Pro chip, at least on paper.

In the following image, you can see that the A18 Pro SoC features six CPU cores, with four high-efficiency cores and two high-performance cores—nothing we haven’t seen before. However, Apple claims these cores are 15% faster than the equivalent cores in the A17 Pro SoC, while also consuming 20% less power. Not bad.

These improvements are due to the A18 Pro chip’s fabrication at TSMC’s N3P node and its new microarchitecture. Additionally, the A18 Pro chip’s cache sublevels have greater capacity than those of the A18 chip. Unfortunately, Apple hasn’t provided detailed information about the microarchitecture of its new SoC.

Additionally, the Neural Engine of the A18 Pro SoC also integrates 16 cores, similar to the A17 Pro chip. Both chips perform the same number of operations at 35 trillion/s. However, despite these similarities, Apple claims that the Neural Engine in the A18 Pro SoC is faster and more efficient than the one in the A17 Pro chip. Moreover, the memory bandwidth has been increased by 17%, which is expected to significantly impact the A18 Pro’s performance.

Now, let’s talk about the graphics logic of the A18 Pro SoC. It has six cores, just like the A17 Pro GPU, but its microarchitecture is different. Thanks to optimization and improved manufacturing, Apple claims the A18 Pro chip is 20% faster than the SoC in the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max. We’re excited to see how well it handles demanding games on these phones.

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Apple also promises that the ray tracing hardware in the A18 Pro SoC is up to twice as fast as that of the A17 Pro chip, which should greatly impact the gaming experience. We’ll have to thoroughly analyze the new iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max to see this in action. We can’t fully assess the performance of this graphics logic until we test it rigorously, but it looks very promising.

Image | Apple

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