You can expect next year's iPhone 18 line to run cooler, faster, and have improved battery life
Have you noticed that application processors are getting more powerful and energy efficient every two to three years? That's because foundries develop lower process nodes resulting in smaller transistors that are show-horned into semiconductors. The more transistors inside a chip, known as the Transistor Count, the more powerful and energy-efficient a chip is. Also important is the Transistor Density which measures the number of transistors per square millimeter (Tr/mm²). Smaller node numbers usually indicate the higher density of a chip.
A higher Transistor Density means that more transistors can be packed into the same physical space. Or, the foundry could make a chip with the same number of transistors much smaller. Higher density chips mean that the component can have a smaller die size allowing more to be cut from a silicon wafer thus reducing the cost of each chip. When transistors are closer together, which happens when a chip has a high Transistor Density, the electrical signals have less space to travel reducing latency and improving performance.
According to Jeff Pu, an analyst with GF Securities, next year the iPhone 18 series will be powered by the A20 and A20 Pro application processors. These chipsets will be built by TSMC using its first-generation 2nm node known as N2. Thus, the A20 and A20 Pro will be the first 2nm processors found inside an iPhone and it will happen with next year's iPhone 18 and iPhone 18 Pro models respectively. Pu adds that in addition to being built using TSMC's 2nm process node, next year's iPhone application processors could feature a new packaging design called Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module (WMCM).
With this new design, multiple chips are integrated into the wafer before the latter is diced into individual chips. This would allow memory to be closer to parts of the chipset that use it such as the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine. The shorter transits will improve the performance of the chip while allowing the phone to run cooler. It also could improve the handset's battery life.
The size of the A20 and A20 Pro should be smaller than the A19 and A19 Pro SoCs that will power the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro lines this year. The smaller die size is expected to help make the A20 and A20 Pro as much as 15% faster than its predecessor and up to 30% more efficient.
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