Today Apple unveiled its M6 chip, the first of a new chip generation that will soon include iPhone 18 Pro’s A20 Pro. Here’s what the M6 reveals about iPhone 18 Pro gains to expect.
M6 points to iPhone 18 Pro having big performance and efficiency gains with A20 Pro
It’s not September yet, but Apple launched two surprise products today: a new Mac mini and Mac Studio. (Pre-orders available now: Mac mini, Mac Studio.)
The Mac mini comes with Apple’s next-generation M6 chip, which belongs to the same family of chips as iPhone 18 Pro’s upcoming A20 Pro.
Here’s how Apple introduced it, per Apple Newsroom:
M6 is built using cutting-edge 2 nm process technology, packing greater transistor density into a smaller die for a major leap in performance and power efficiency. M6 also introduces a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, providing up to 2x the peak compute over previous generations to make on-device AI workflows run even faster. […]
M6 has a brand-new 12-core CPU complex — two more cores than M5 — that consists of 2 super cores, 4 performance cores, and 6 efficiency cores. It delivers the world’s fastest single-threaded performance and up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance as compared to M5
M6 will ultimately prove more powerful than the iPhone 18 Pro‘s new A20 Pro chip. That’s true of Mac and iPad-class M chips in general.
But because M6 and A20 Pro are part of the same family of chips, the upgrades announced for M6 are expected to reflect changes coming in A20 Pro too.
And most notably, A20 Pro will use the new 2-nanometer process Apple highlights as enabling “a major leap in performance and power efficiency” with M6.
We’ve suspected that the transition to 2nm will bring bigger than usual gains. But the M6 details confirm that.
A20 Pro may not have the same number of CPU and GPU cores as M6. And the Dual 16-core Neural Engine is a question mark too. But thanks to 2-nanometer technology, it should bring big improvements in the two areas Apple highlighted today: performance and efficiency.
What will the exact year-over-year improvements be? It’s hard to say for sure. But when iPhone 18 Pro is unveiled in a couple of weeks, expect to see performance and efficiency be key upgrades of the A20 Pro.
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