Apple is said to be preparing a massive upgrade for the Neural Engine heading to the next generation of Apple silicon chips and the iPhone 16. The upgrade will enable the iPhone 16 to take advantage of exclusive generative AI features as part of iOS 18, according to a new report from Economic Daily News.
The report claims that the number of Neural Engine cores will significantly increase with Apple’s upcoming A18 and M4 series of chips. The report also reiterates that the anticipated chips will be built on TSMC’s enhanced 3-nanometer node, otherwise known as N3E. This new process will help TSMC scale up its production volume of 3nm chips by more than 50 percent compared to the basic 3nm process, or N3B, currently powering the A17 Pro and the M3 family.
The A17 Pro’s Neural Engine already featured a massive upgrade over that of the A16 Bionic chip. While both chips feature a 16-core design, the A17 Pro can perform up to 35 trillion operations per second, more than double the 17 trillion operations per second the A16 Bionic is capable of. The M3 family’s Neural Engine is up to 15 percent faster than that of the M2 chip series.
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The increase in the number of Neural Engine cores on the A18 and M4 chips will also be coupled with gains from architectural changes, the report adds. These upgrades could be key in enabling generative AI features on the iPhone 16 and future Apple devices. The company is strongly suspected of showing off its work on AI with iOS 18 and other software releases as part of WWDC 2024. Other reports have also speculated that the iPhone 16 could have its own set of exclusive generative AI features which could only be enabled by new hardware.
The iPhone 16 lineup could also come with significantly upgraded microphones for an LLM-powered Siri, a sentiment shared earlier by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Apple’s desire to implement on-device LLMs could require more advanced hardware exclusive to the iPhone 16 as evidenced by the rumored Neural Engine and microphone upgrades.
Generative AI features rumored to be heading to iOS 18 are said to span every part of the system, including apps and services like Siri, Messages, Xcode, Apple Music, iWork, and more. Apple is also exploring licensing deals with major publishers around the world to acquire rights to their archives as a stream of training data for its LLM models.
Beyond the iPhone 16 and future Mac models with the M4 chip, Apple is said to be planning an even bigger crop of generative AI features for next year’s iPhone 17 lineup. The nature of those features is yet to be concrete, but the company is surely ready to throw its weight in the field of AI.
