Apple's A20 Pro Chip Shows Up To 51.5% NPU Performance Increase

New Geekbench AI benchmark scores suggest Apple's forthcoming iPhone 18 Pro, codenamed iPhone19,2 and reportedly featuring the A20 Pro chip, will deliver substantial gains in its Neural Processing Unit (NPU) performance. Benchmarks indicate the A20 Pro's NPU saw an uplift of up to 51.53% in certain AI tasks compared to the A19 Pro chip found in the current iPhone 17 Pro models.

The leaked scores, which appeared on September 12, detail performance across different AI workloads using Apple's Core ML framework. The tests measure performance in single precision (FP32), half precision (FP16), and quantized (INT8) computations, crucial for on-device machine learning tasks. The A20 Pro achieved scores in the Neural Engine benchmarks that appear to surpass previous Pro iPhone generations and rival some of Apple's M-series chips used in iPads.

Specifically, the benchmarks highlight advancements in the NPU's ability to handle complex AI computations. The A20 Pro is reported to feature a dual 16-core Neural Engine, totaling 32 cores, alongside an enhanced neural accelerator and a 50% increase in memory bandwidth. These upgrades are designed to accelerate on-device AI applications, including more sophisticated camera features like real-time object tracking and advanced video stabilization, as well as improved local language models and generative AI capabilities.

These performance improvements in the NPU are expected to translate into a more responsive user experience for AI-driven features and potentially better power efficiency, as NPUs are generally more power-efficient than CPUs or GPUs for these specific tasks. While Apple has not officially confirmed these details, the benchmark results provide a strong indication of the performance trajectory for future iPhone models.