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 TSMC N3E (3nm FinFET) and measure 90 mm2 and 105 mm2 respectively.[6]
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.[7][8]
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.[8]
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.[8]
The A18 Pro features an additional GPU core, bringing its total to six cores, and delivers 20% faster performance than the A17 Pro GPU. Apple claims it offers 2x faster hardware ray tracing, though it's unclear if this is exclusive to the A18 Pro or available on the non-Pro variant as well.[8]
Additional aspects
The A18 Pro distinguishes itself from the non-Pro variant with advanced media features, including improved display engines, faster USB controllers, and upgraded video and image signal processors.. Apple claims that the new video encoder processes 2 times more data than the A17 Pro chip.[8] 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.[7][8][9]
The A18's NPU delivers 35 TOPS, making it approximately 58 times more powerful than the NPU in the A11, which could handle 600 billion operations per second. The A11, introduced in 2017, was the first Apple chip to feature a Neural Engine.[10]
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.[8]
