iPhone 18 Pro chip leak points to major graphics and memory upgrades

Apple’s next-generation iPhone 18 Pro could deliver a particularly significant jump in graphics performance, with a new leak offering an early look at what may be inside the company’s upcoming A20 Pro chip.

According to details shared on Chinese social media and reported by MacRumors, an alleged diagram of the A20 Pro suggests Apple could equip the chip with a seven-core GPU, up from the six-core GPU used by the A19 Pro.

If accurate, the additional graphics core could give the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max more headroom for demanding games, graphics-heavy apps and on-device AI workloads. The leaked layout does not reveal final performance figures, however.

The leak also points to a potentially important change to memory performance. The A20 Pro is claimed to use a 96-bit memory interface for LPDDR5X memory, compared with the 64-bit interface associated with the previous generation. A wider interface could substantially increase the amount of data that can be moved between memory and the processor, potentially benefiting graphics performance and increasingly demanding Apple Intelligence features.

Apple is nevertheless expected to retain a familiar six-core CPU arrangement, with two performance cores joined by four efficiency cores. The alleged design suggests the efficiency cores could share a larger 8MB L2 cache, while the performance cores would continue to have access to 16MB of L2 cache.

The changes would come alongside an even bigger shift in how Apple manufactures its iPhone processors. As The Apple Post has previously reported, the A20 Pro is expected to become Apple’s first iPhone chip manufactured using TSMC’s 2-nanometer process, replacing the 3-nanometer technology used for the A19 generation.

Moving to the new process should allow Apple to fit more transistors into the chip while improving power efficiency, potentially giving the iPhone 18 Pro better performance without an equivalent increase in power consumption. Previous supply-chain reports have suggested the A20 generation could deliver particularly noticeable efficiency gains compared with its predecessor.

Apple is also expected to adopt a new chip packaging approach with the A20 Pro. Reports have suggested RAM will be integrated more closely with the CPU, GPU and Neural Engine using TSMC’s Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module technology. Alongside the wider memory interface suggested by the latest leak, the change could become particularly important as Apple pushes more advanced AI processing directly onto the iPhone.

The A20 Pro is expected to power the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. Apple’s rumored foldable iPhone Ultra is also expected to use an A20-series processor, although its exact GPU configuration could differ as Apple balances performance, heat and battery life inside the thinner foldable design.