Apple A20 Pro: 2nm process, 7-core GPU and 32-core Neural Engine
Apple unveiled the A20 Pro processor for iPhone 18 Pro, iPhone 18 Pro Max and the foldable iPhone Duo. This is Apple’s first iPhone processor manufactured using a 2-nanometer process.
Compared to the A19 Pro, graphics performance increased by up to 40%, memory bandwidth rose by 50%, and AI compute power doubled.
Processor and graphics
The A20 Pro is equipped with a new six-core central processor featuring two high-performance and four energy-efficient cores. Neural accelerators are also integrated into the compute cores. Apple claims a performance increase of up to 20% for the central processor compared to the A19 Pro.
The graphics processor now includes seven cores instead of six in the A19 Pro. The new architecture delivers up to 40% higher performance compared to its predecessor while simultaneously improving energy efficiency. Graphics support hardware-accelerated ray tracing and also feature neural accelerators.
With FP8 computations, the performance of GPU neural accelerators doubled. This format allows reducing models’ memory and computational resource requirements.
32 neural processing cores and faster memory
The A20 Pro features two 16-core neural processors, totaling 32 cores. Its computational power is twice that of the A19 Pro. It also supports 8-bit floating-point operations.
The bandwidth of the unified memory increased by 50% compared to the A19 Pro. Apple also states that the memory interface used in the A20 Pro is the widest ever implemented in an iPhone. The company did not disclose the specific bus width.
New layout and cooling
In the A20 Pro, Apple has changed the layout of the processor and memory. The design is based on the approach used in the M-series processors: the chip and memory are now placed side by side, so that memory does not interfere with heat dissipation from the processor, and the A20 Pro itself can be more effectively connected to the vapor chamber.
The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max feature a next-generation vapor chamber with three times the surface area compared to the cooling system in the iPhone 17 Pro. Combined with more thermally conductive materials and the new A20 Pro layout, this enables sustained high performance under prolonged load.
Apple claims the iPhone 18 Pro with the A19 Pro delivers up to 40% higher sustained performance compared to the iPhone 17 Pro. Relative to the iPhone 16 Pro with the A18 Pro, that figure has doubled. These figures refer specifically to sustained load, not short-term peak processor performance.
The same A20 Pro is installed in the iPhone Duo, but due to a different cooling system design, Apple provides a separate metric for the foldable model: up to 35% higher sustained performance compared to the iPhone 17 Pro.
