The A18 and A18 Pro APs to be used to power this year’s iPhone 16 series will have a more powerful Neural Engine than the M4’s.
Apple’s M4 chip, currently powering the new 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro (2024) models, has a Neural Engine designed to handle AI-based features. The Neural Engine on the M4 operates at a speed of 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS) which tops the 35 TOPS that the A17 Pro’s Neural Engine runs at. The A16 Bionic, found inside the iPhone 14 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, the iPhone 15, and iPhone 15 Pro, has a Neural Engine capable of running 17 TOPS.
Despite the large discrepancy in the speed of the Neural Engine in the A17 Pro and the A16 Bionic, the reason why the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus won’t be running Apple Intelligence while the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max will has to do with the amount of DRAM on the different models.
