Apple A18 chips will come with the iPhone 16 series and the premature A18 benchmark scores suggest the Apple A18 could be a significant upgrade over the Apple A17 SoC. The Apple A18 Geekbench score appears to be 20.77 percent higher than its predecessor in single-core performance. Speaking of cores, this could continue to be a hexacore chip but with a higher 3,890 MHz clock speed. You can also find the comparison of expected Apple A18 vs A17 specs differences towards the bottom of this article.
Note: We have referred to the rumoured Apple A18 Pro Geekbench scores and specifications in this article. We shall update the article with our in-house test results once we get to review the new iPhones. Meanwhile, the Apple A17 Pro scores have been taken from our test of the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Expected Apple A18 advantages over Apple A17
- Apple A18 Neural Engine could be more powerful (with more cores) to future-proof Apple Intelligence (AI) features. Some of these devices could be designed to run on-device also.
- Apple A18’s graphics capability could be better, albeit limited.
- Among other things, the Apple A18 Pro could have a newer 3nm N3E process node, more memory bandwidth, an improved CPU instruction set, increased cache size, an upgraded 5G modem and other connectivity options.
Apple A18 vs A17 Geekbench score (rumoured)
Geekbench benchmark displays the single-core and multi-core scores of the chip after making it run certain synthetic and performance-heavy tasks. Here are the reported Geekbench scores, per a leak.
| GEEKBENCH SCORES | Apple A18 | Apple A17 |
| Single-core | 3,500 | 2,908 |
| Multi-core | 8,200 | 7,193 |
Apple A18 Pro GB6 score is said to be 3500/8200.
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Apple A18 vs A17 specifications (expected)
| BASIS | Apple A18 | Apple A17 |
| Process | 3nm | 3nm |
| Manufacturer | TSMC | TSMC |
| Cores | 6 | 6 |
| CPU Structure |
2x 3.89 GHz 4x 2.2 GHz |
2x 3.78 GHz 4x 2.11 GHz |
| CPU max frequency | 3,890 MHz | 3,780 MHz |
| CPU Bit | 64-bit | 64-bit |
| Instruction set | ARMv9.2-A | ARMv8.6-A |
| GPU | Apple A18 GPU (1450 MHz) | Apple A17 GPU (1398 MHz) |
| NPU | Apple Neural Engine | Apple Neural Engine (16-core) |
| Memory type | LPDDR5T | LPDDR5 |
| Modem | Snapdragon X75 | Snapdragon X70 |
| WiFi technology | Wi-Fi 7 | Wi-Fi 6 |
| Bluetooth technology | Bluetooth 5.4 | Bluetooth 5.3 |
| 5G connectivity | 5G sub-6Ghz, mmWave | 5G sub-6Ghz, mmWave |
FAQs
When are the Apple A18 launch and Apple A17 launch dates?
Apple A18 launch date is September 9th, 2024 and the Apple A17 launch date is September 12th, 2023.
Which are the expected iPhones with Apple A18 chipset?
Apple A18 could be powering the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max. The latter could be running on a specced-up Apple A18 Pro chip.
