Apple's A18 and A18 Pro processors powers the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro — and Apple Intelligence

News
By ,
Published

The go-to chips for Apple Intelligence

Apple A18
(Image credit: Apple)

Apple's next iPhone chip is the A18, powering the new suite of smartphones and Apple's first lineup touting Apple Intelligence features, created specifically for the iPhone 16.

The new chip, based on TSMC's second-gen 3-nanometer technology, combines two performance cores, four efficiency cores, and a 16-core neural engine, which Apple says is twice as fast as previous chips for machine learning. It also boasts 17% more system memory bandwidth.

Apple compared the chip to the A16 Bionic, the chip in the previous non-Pro iPhones, as opposed to the A17 Pro. Apple says the new chip is 30% faster than the A16 Bionic.

Latest Videos FromTom's Hardware
Brandon Hill
Brandon Hill
Senior Editor

Brandon Hill is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware. He has written about PC and Mac tech since the late 1990s with bylines at AnandTech, DailyTech, and Hot Hardware. When he is not consuming copious amounts of tech news, he can be found enjoying the NC mountains or the beach with his wife and two sons.

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • brandonjclark
    The RUMOR is that the iPhone 17 will have 16gb in the Pro versions, to better accommodate the Apple AI local processing.*

    {*next year}

    I'm just REALLY not sure if I wanna pull the trigger this Friday or wait it out ANOTHER year.

    *Current phone is 5 years old, looks like new, but the battery sucks and it's Android. I want to get out of this ecosystem and back to Apple.
    Reply
  • nitrium
    brandonjclark said:
    ...and it's Android. I want to get out of this ecosystem and back to Apple.
    Why though? The flexibility and ability to customise your experience however you like it alone is worth using Android. Add to that if Apple (or Google) decides to ban Twitter (or any other app) you can still install without the official store (iTunes or Google Play) and keep using it. And of course a far larger variety of hardware options.
    Reply
  • watzupken
    brandonjclark said:
    The RUMOR is that the iPhone 17 will have 16gb in the Pro versions, to better accommodate the Apple AI local processing.*

    {*next year}

    I'm just REALLY not sure if I wanna pull the trigger this Friday or wait it out ANOTHER year.

    *Current phone is 5 years old, looks like new, but the battery sucks and it's Android. I want to get out of this ecosystem and back to Apple.
    You really believe Apple will give their products a significant update in anything? Just look back the last 5 years and you will notice that they bring very incremental updates year on year to all their product lines. In 2024, they are still selling you Macs with 8GB of soldered RAM and 256GB of storage, while claiming it is not a problem at all. In their own words, 8GB on Mac is like 16GB on other OS/ platforms. May be you can get 16GB as an upgrade, but will cost a lot more.

    In your case, I do think it may be worth upgrading your phone since the battery is expected to be terrible now. But if you are getting the Pro/ Pro Max series and if the price is better on the older iPhone 15, I see little reason to get the iPhone 16 series.
    Reply
  • brandonjclark
    nitrium said:
    Why though? The flexibility and ability to customise your experience however you like it alone is worth using Android.

    As I've gotten older, the primary reasons I used to own Android have tapered off. I no longer look to spend any more time on my phone than I have to, and customizing it is not as important as it once was to me.
    Reply
  • brandonjclark
    watzupken said:
    You really believe Apple will give their products a significant update in anything? Just look back the last 5 years and you will notice that they bring very incremental updates year on year to all their product lines. In 2024, they are still selling you Macs with 8GB of soldered RAM and 256GB of storage, while claiming it is not a problem at all. In their own words, 8GB on Mac is like 16GB on other OS/ platforms. May be you can get 16GB as an upgrade, but will cost a lot more.

    In your case, I do think it may be worth upgrading your phone since the battery is expected to be terrible now. But if you are getting the Pro/ Pro Max series and if the price is better on the older iPhone 15, I see little reason to get the iPhone 16 series.
    I think it's likely the Pro version of the iPhone next year will have 16GB.
    Reply
  • skiwi44
    nitrium said:
    Why though? The flexibility and ability to customise your experience however you like it alone is worth using Android. Add to that if Apple (or Google) decides to ban Twitter (or any other app) you can still install without the official store (iTunes or Google Play) and keep using it. And of course a far larger variety of hardware options.
    Security for one.
    Meaningful updates, regardless of carrier, for 6 years is another.
    Reply