Recently, Apple officially released the new iPhone 16 series, all of which are equipped with the new second-generation 3nm chip, with significantly improved performance. However, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus are equipped with the A18 chip, while the iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max are equipped with the A18 Pro chip. What is the difference between the two chips?
Similarities:
Both the A18 and A18 Pro chips are built on a second-generation 3nm process with smaller transistors.
Both chips use a 6-core CPU, including 2 high-performance cores and 4 energy-efficiency cores.
It also features an upgraded 16-core neural engine optimized for running large generative models.
It also has 17% more system memory bandwidth than the previous generation, enabling more efficient access to generative models.
Differences:
The difference is that the A18 uses a 5-core GPU, while the A18 Pro has a 6-core GPU .
The iPhone 16 series uses a new heat dissipation design. Apple said it updated the main logic board, centralized the chip placement, and optimized the surrounding architecture. It has a recyclable aluminum substructure that dissipates heat, which improves the sustained performance of games by 30%.
The A18 adds hardware-accelerated ray tracing. This feature is already available in the iPhone 15 Pro models equipped with the A17 Pro, but it is new to the standard iPhone series. Hardware-accelerated ray tracing is very useful for games, and the standard iPhone 16 can run all the console-level games that Apple advertised for the iPhone 15 Pro models last year.
The A18 Pro has the same 6-core CPU as the A18, as well as the same Neural Engine, but it has an extra GPU core.
In terms of heat dissipation, according to Apple, the iPhone 16 Pro uses a chassis made of 100% recycled aluminum to maximize heat dissipation capabilities. It is solid-state diffusion bonded to the titanium frame and combined with a graphite-coated aluminum substructure. Compared with the A17 Pro, the new heat dissipation architecture improves sustained gaming performance by 20%.
