Apple Intelligence: pricier iPhone 16 Pro will get the good A18 processor


When Apple announced that only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max can run its AI-powered suite of features called Apple Intelligence, the immediate assumption was that it is because the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus are powered by an older and slower processor.

That turned out to not be the case, as even Apple’s M1 AI coprocessor with its 11 TOPS count can run Apple Intelligence, let alone the A16 Bionic in the iPhone 15 with its 17 TOPS. According to Apple’s Craig Federighi, the constraints were rather in the iPhone 15‘s 6GB RAM count.

Still, ever since Apple released the iPhone 14 series, the two cheaper iPhones got the Pro models’ system chip from the previous year, while the current iPhone Pro versions got a newer, faster processor. The iPhone 15 models, for instance, are powered by a 4nm Apple A16 Bionic chipset, while the iPhone 15 Pros run on the 3nm A17 Pro system chip.
Both the iPhone 16 and the iPhone 16 Pro will have 8GB RAM, though, and will be powered by the newest Apple A18 processor series, so at least the iPhone’s processor fragmentation must be over, right? Not so fast…

Apple A18 Pro processor specs and features

  • 2x 4.05 GHz cores
  • 4x efficiency cores
  • 6x GPU cores
  • 3nm TSMC N3P production process
  • 40% faster graphics
Apple is preparing to launch the iPhone 16 series with a new A18 chipset that will break the 4 GHz speed barrier for the first time. It will also allow for a significant boost in on-device AI calculations and machine learning. The Apple A18 Bionic will eventually land in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus, while the top-shelf A18 Pro will be powering the flagship iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max handsets.

A18 Pro processor cores and clock count

The Apple A18 Pro will feature both a 6-core main processor and a 6-core graphics processing subsystem. Apple reportedly wanted to clock the two A18 Pro performance cores to the exorbitant 4.95 GHz clock frequency to no avail as the thermal management stability and power draw just weren’t there at those speeds. As a result, it reportedly settled for the 4.05 GHz clock count, which will still be on par with the expected Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 speeds.

The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, however, would be faster than their predecessors with the A17 Pro whose peak speed is lower, at a 3.8 GHz clock frequency, with the corresponding lower benchmarks.

Thus, any speed advantages that the Apple A18 Pro on the iPhone 16 Pro may have before the A17 Pro on the iPhone 15 Pro might be coming solely from the increase in peak clock speeds, rather than the fact that it will be made on a more advanced production node.

A18 Pro production process

This is par for the course, as newer generations of a production node typically brings stability and power draw improvements, rather than some grand performance boost, so Apple might indeed be using it to add features to the A18, instead of clock speed.

TSMC, 2024

The top-shelf Apple A18 Pro chipset version, however, may be crafted on TSMC’s more expensive, lower yield N3P process that is 5% faster and consumes up to 10% less energy than the N3E (Enhanced) process that the A18 in iPhone 16 would be using.

A18 Pro graphics

Where the iPhone 16 Pro series will shine brighter is in the gaming, computational photography, AI, and other departments that need a powerful graphics subsystem. Compared to the current iPhone 15 Pro GPU, the Apple A18 Pro graphics benchmarks show that it may nearly 40% faster. That’s a huge jump, but only for the Pro models, where Apple will provide one extra GPU core.

The 6-core GPU will increase the gaming street cred of the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, and it will also help it stay ahead of Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 processor series. It has been catching up to Apple in the GPU department lately, and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 in the Galaxy S25 Ultra won’t be an exception, so Apple appears to have taken notice.

A18 Pro and Apple Intelligence AI calculations

  • >38 Trillion Operations Per Second
The Apple A17 Pro chipset’s Neural Engine AI calculations subsystem has a 16-core coprocessor which is capable of 35 Trillion Operations Per Second (TOPS). That is more than double the 17 TOPS offered by the A16 Bionic processor. The Apple A18 Pro’s Neural Engine will probably top that out by a large margin.

The 2024 iPhones will be the first line that will not only support Apple Intelligence on all the handsets in the iPhone 16 series, but will also be future-proof for the upcoming Large Language Model bump from the current 3B LLM to a 7B LLM model.

In fact, the Apple A18 Pro is expected to top the 38 TOPS of Apple’s powerful M4 chip that is currently in its latest iPad Pro (2024) models, so we can easily expect something north of 40 TOPS for the Neural Engine in the Apple A18 Pro chipset.

Apple A18 will leave the iPhone 16 behind

The stripped down version of the Apple A18 for the iPhone 16 and 16 Plus will allegedly come with a 6-core processor as well, but a penta-core GPU, compared to the six cores of the graphics processor in the iPhone 16 Pro. The iPhone 16 processor will also have reduced cache size compared to the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max.
Coupled with the TSMC N3E production process, the Apple A18 chip version in the iPhone 16 will make it a bit slower and more power-hungry than the A18 Pro processor in the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 Pro Max. Apple, however, needs to make its newly minted Apple Intelligence features run without a hitch on all of its 2024 iPhones, so it will place 8GB RAM in the cheapest iPhone 16 version for the first time, too.

Still, the difference between the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro processors will be a lot smaller compared to the previous two iPhone generations, and that has to count for something. 


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