Apple launched the iPhone 16 series at the “It’s Glowtime” event on Monday. The smartphone series, comprising the base model, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and the iPhone 16 Pro Max, were introduced with many new hardware features and Apple Intelligence integration. This was also the first time the Cupertino-based tech giant equipped the series with two new system-on-a-chip (SoC) dubbed A18 and A18 Pro. The company claimed improved performance, better gaming, and the capability to run large language models (LLMs) with the new chipsets.
Apple Debuts A18, A18 Pro Chipsets
At the event, the company highlighted that the base and the Plus models will be equipped with the A18 chipset, whereas the A18 Pro SoC will power the Pro models. The addition of the A18 processor for the non-Pro models means the successor to the iPhone 15 (powered by A16 Bionic) has entirely skipped the A17 Pro chip. Apple claimed that this jump would result in vastly improved performance across different resource-intensive tasks.
Both chipsets are built on the second generation of the 3nm process, first seen with the A17 Pro. There is a 16-core Neural Engine onboard which is said to run AI tasks at 35 TOPS as well as a six-core CPU and a five-core GPU.
Apple claims that the A18 chipset’s six-core CPU is 30 percent faster than the A16 Bionic in the predecessor. It is also said to be 30 percent more power efficient. Further, the iPhone 16 and the iPhone 16 Plus are said to get 40 percent faster and 35 percent power efficiency GPU performance than the non-Pro iPhone 15 models. These devices are also getting hardware-accelerated ray tracing capabilities.
In the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, the A18 Pro chipset is claimed to have a 17 percent increase in total system memory bandwidth, which will enable the devices to undertake complex AI tasks. Compared to the A17 Pro, the new SoC is said to be 20 percent faster in GPU performance, and 15 percent faster in CPU performance. It is also said to be 20 percent more power efficient.
Additionally, the A18 Pro also offers improved ray tracing with “realistic light sources and reflections” as well as “more consistent frame rates”. The chipset also powers the Always-On and ProMotion technology on the device. Additionally, it enables faster USB 3 speeds and ProRes video recording.
A new ISP and video encoder processes twice the amount of data for faster video encoding and pro workflows.
