iOS 18 – Apple’s latest iPhone operating system – appears to improve the performance of the phone’s Neural Engine by as much as 25 percent, according to claims online. The update, announced at the 2024 Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) on June 10, is expected to bring several artificial intelligence (AI) features to the iPhone, among other quality-of-life improvements. As part of this AI initiative, it has reportedly given a boost to the phone’s Neural Engine.
iOS 18 brings better NPU performance
According to a post by user @lafaiel on X (formerly Twitter), the iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18 scored 7,816 points in the Geekbench ML Score test, compared to a score of 6,249 on iOS 17.5.1. This means approximately 25 percent better performance in machine learning capabilities on the phone.
CoreML Neural Engine Inference is benchmarked for machine learning tasks on the phone, taking advantage of hardware like the CPU and NPU (or in Apple terms, the Neural Engine). Although the NPU works in the same way as a graphics processing unit (GPU), instead of accelerating graphics, it boosts neural network operations.
iOS 18 is set to bring several significant upgrades to the iPhone, centered around new AI capabilities that the company calls “Apple Intelligence.” Thanks to this, the update will bring text generation and summarization capabilities throughout the system. The iPhone will also support image generation with a new app called Image Playground. Furthermore, Siri – Apple’s voice assistant – also gets smarter with On-Screen Awareness.
Compatibility
Namely, only iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max powered by A17 Pro SoC will get new AI features in all systems. Although Apple has released the iOS 18 Developer Beta 1 update to users worldwide, the Apple Intelligence features will be rolled out later this year and initially only in English (US).
The compatibility list for iOS 18 includes the iPhone XR and later, up to the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
