Overview
- Apple officially unveiled the A20 Pro at its September 9 event as a 2‑nanometre iPhone system‑on‑chip that powers the iPhone 18 Pro, 18 Pro Max and the new foldable iPhone Duo.
- The A20 Pro doubles dedicated AI throughput by adding a second Neural Engine for 32 total cores and increases memory bandwidth by about 50 percent to speed on‑device AI and heavy workloads.
- Apple changed chip packaging to place the silicon and memory side‑by‑side and fitted a vapor chamber with three times the surface area to remove memory from the SOC thermal path and sustain up to 40 percent better long‑run performance.
- Apple also introduced in‑house networking chips — the C2 cellular modem, which Apple says gives faster uploads and lower power use than its prior modem, and the N1 for Wi‑Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 — and set Pro model preorders for September 12 with availability from September 18.
- Rising component costs and constrained memory supply help explain a roughly $100 hike in Pro starting prices and signal greater demand on TSMC’s N2 capacity as Apple leans on on‑device AI to differentiate its phones.