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Apple A18
System on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc.

The Apple A18 and Apple A18 Pro are a pair of 64-bit ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series. They are used in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro lineups and the iPhone 16e, and built on a second generation 3 nm process by TSMC. Announced on September 9, 2024 and February 19, 2025, they are the successors to the Apple A15 Bionic (exclusively on the entry-level iPhone models with 4-core GPU), Apple A16 Bionic (exclusively on the standard iPhone models with 5-core GPU) and the Apple A17 Pro (exclusively on the premium iPhone models with 6-core GPU) processors, respectively.

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Design

The Apple A18 and A18 Pro feature an Apple-designed 64-bit ARMv9.2-A six-core CPU with two high-performance cores @4.04 GHz and four energy-efficient cores @2.42 GHz, a four to six-core GPU, and a NPU with 16 cores. Both are produced on TSMC N3E (3nm FinFET) and measure 90 mm2 and 105 mm2 respectively.2

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.34

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.5

GPU

The A18 chip integrates a new Apple-designed four or 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.6

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.7

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.91011

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.12

Neural processing comparison between chip generations

ChipTOPSReleasedProcessing power compared to the A18
A11 Bionic0.620171.71%
A12 Bionic5.0201814.29%
A13 Bionic6.0201917.14%
A14 Bionic11.0202031.43%
A15 Bionic15.8202145.14%
A16 Bionic17.0202248.57%
A17 Pro35.02023100.00%
A1835.0*2024100.00%*

*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.13

Products that include the A18

Products that include the A18 Pro

See also

References

  1. Hill, Brandon; Freedman, Andrew E. (September 9, 2024). "Apple's A18 and A18 Pro processors powers the iPhone 16 and 16 Pro — and Apple Intelligence". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved September 15, 2024. https://www.tomshardware.com/phones/iphone/apples-a18-processor-powers-the-iphone-16-and-apple-intelligence ↩

  2. "A18/A18 Pro die shots size revelated". https://x.com/QaM_Section31/status/1840921147048935632 ↩

  3. Mayo, Benjamin (September 9, 2024). "iPhone 16 is powered by A18 chip, up to 30% faster than iPhone 15". 9to5Mac. Retrieved September 9, 2024. https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/09/iphone-16-is-powered-by-a18-chip-up-to-30-faster-than-iphone-15/ ↩

  4. Apple (September 9, 2024). Apple Event - September 9. Retrieved September 14, 2024 – via YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarNiSl_uh4 ↩

  5. Apple (September 9, 2024). Apple Event - September 9. Retrieved September 14, 2024 – via YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarNiSl_uh4 ↩

  6. Apple (September 9, 2024). Apple Event - September 9. Retrieved September 14, 2024 – via YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarNiSl_uh4 ↩

  7. Apple (September 9, 2024). Apple Event - September 9. Retrieved September 14, 2024 – via YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarNiSl_uh4 ↩

  8. Apple (September 9, 2024). Apple Event - September 9. Retrieved September 14, 2024 – via YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarNiSl_uh4 ↩

  9. Mayo, Benjamin (September 9, 2024). "iPhone 16 is powered by A18 chip, up to 30% faster than iPhone 15". 9to5Mac. Retrieved September 9, 2024. https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/09/iphone-16-is-powered-by-a18-chip-up-to-30-faster-than-iphone-15/ ↩

  10. Apple (September 9, 2024). Apple Event - September 9. Retrieved September 14, 2024 – via YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarNiSl_uh4 ↩

  11. Petrov, Daniel (September 12, 2024). "iPhone 16 is the fastest cheap iPhone ever thanks to AI". PhoneArena. Retrieved September 14, 2024. https://www.phonearena.com/news/iphone-16-ram-processor-benchmark_id162469 ↩

  12. Banerjee, Debrath. "(PDF) A Microarchitectural Study on Apple's A11 Bionic Processor". ResearchGate. Retrieved September 15, 2024. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325053646_A_Microarchitectural_Study_on_Apple's_A11_Bionic_Processor ↩

  13. Apple (September 9, 2024). Apple Event - September 9. Retrieved September 14, 2024 – via YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarNiSl_uh4 ↩