iOS 18 could bring AI performance boost to iPhone, Geekbench score suggests
iOS 18 – Apple’s latest operating system for the iPhone – is said to improve the handset’s Neural Engine performance by as much as 25 percent, according to claims online. The update, announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024 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 is said to have given the handset’s Neural Engine a boost.
iOS 18 brings better NPU performance
According to a after According to user @lafaiel on X (formerly Twitter), an iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18 scored 7,816 points on the Geekbench ML Score test, compared to a score of 6,249 on iOS 17.5.1. This represents about a 25 percent improvement in performance from the handset’s machine learning capabilities.
The CoreML Neural Engine Inference was tested in the benchmarks responsible for the machine learning tasks on the handset, making use of hardware such as the CPU and the NPU (or in Apple’s terms, the Neural Engine). While an NPU works in a similar way to a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), instead of accelerating graphics, it boosts neural network operations.
iOS 18 will bring a number of notable upgrades to the iPhone, the core of which is new AI capabilities that the company is calling “Apple Intelligence.” The update will bring system-wide text generation and summarization capabilities. The iPhone will also support image generation using a new app called Image Playground. Additionally, Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, is also getting smarter with On-Screen Awareness.
Compatibility
Notably, only the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, powered by the A17 Pro SoC, will receive the new AI features across all systems. While Apple has already pushed out the iOS 18 Developer Beta 1 update to users worldwide, Apple Intelligence features will roll out later this year, and will initially only be in English (US).
The iOS 18 compatibility list includes the iPhone XR and later models, up to and including the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
