- Source: Apple A18
The Apple A18 and Apple A18 Pro are a pair of 64-bit ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series. They are used in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro lineups, and built on a second generation 3 nm process by TSMC. Announced on September 9, 2024, they are the successors to the Apple A16 Bionic and the Apple A17 Pro processors, respectively.
Design
The Apple A18 and A18 Pro feature an Apple-designed 64-bit ARMv9.2-A six-core CPU with two high-performance cores and four energy-efficient cores, a five-core (A18) and six-core (A18 Pro) GPU and a NPU with 16 cores. Both are produced on TSME N3E (3nm FinFET) and measure 90 mm2 and 105 mm2 respectively.
= CPU
=Apple claims the new A18 chip is up to 30% faster in CPU performance compared to iPhone 15 with the A16 Bionic chip and 50% compared to the iPhone 14 with the A15 Bionic chip. Also, it can deliver the same CPU performance of the A16 Bionic chip while consuming 30% less power.
The A18 Pro is up to 15% faster in CPU performance than the A17 Pro chip, and it can deliver the same CPU performance of A17 Pro chip while consuming 20% less power. Apple claims the A18 Pro chip has larger caches than the non-Pro A18 chip.
= GPU
=The A18 chip integrates a new Apple-designed five-core GPU, now adding hardware accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading support to the non-Pro lineup. Apple claims the new A18 chip is up to 40% faster in GPU performance compared to iPhone 15 with the A16 Bionic chip, and it can deliver the same GPU performance of the A16 Bionic chip while consuming 35% less power.
The A18 Pro has one more GPU core, making it a six-core GPU, and it can deliver 20% faster performance compared to the GPU on the A17 Pro chip. Apple says it has 2x faster hardware ray tracing, although it’s not clear if it’s an exclusive feature of the A18 Pro chip compared to the non-Pro variant.
= Additional aspects
=The A18 Pro also differentiates itself from the non-Pro variant by its advanced media features, including new display engines, faster USB controllers and new video and image signal processors. Apple claims that the new video encoder processes 2 times more data than the A17 Pro chip. The A18 has a legacy USB 2.0 controller capable of only 480 Mbit/s through the USB-C port. The A18 Pro has a USB 3.2 Gen 2 controller capable of 10 Gb/s.
NPU and AI processing
Apple claims that the new 16-core Neural Engine is capable of 35 trillion operations per second, with 2× faster machine learning compared to the A16 Bionic chip. The A18 Pro, compared to the A17 Pro, can run Apple Intelligence features up to 15% faster. As shown on benchmarks, all chips in the A18 series have 8 GB of RAM, and both chips have 17% more memory bandwidth.
The NPU of the A18, with 35 TOPS, is approximately 58.33 times more powerful than the NPU of the Apple A11 (600 billion operations per second versus 35 trillion operations per second), which was the first Apple chip with a Neural Engine. The A11 was introduced in 2017.
= Neural processing comparison between chip generations
=*Although the A18 is theoretically capable of the same number of operations per second as the A17 Pro, real world performances may be superior due to improvements on other parts of the SoC, such as the larger memory bandwidth. Apple claims that the A18 Pro is 15% faster on Apple Intelligence tasks compared to the A17 Pro.
See also
Apple Intelligence
Apple M4 Series
References
Kata Kunci Pencarian:
- IPhone 16
- Apple A18
- Apple A17
- A18
- IPhone 16 Pro
- IPhone 16
- Apple silicon
- Apple M4
- Apple A16
- IPhone
- List of Apple codenames
