The fruit company is working on a dedicated chip for powering AI on its devices. Currently in testing in prototype iPhones, the silicon internally dubbed “Apple Neural Engine” is expected to improve the handling of tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence: some examples would be facial and speech recognition. We could actually see battery improvements in devices using this chip, as work would be offloaded from the main processor and graphics chip.



Though Apple devices already sport forms of AI technology — the Siri virtual assistant and basic computer vision assets — a dedicated chip would further improve user experience. In addition, offloading AI-related computational processing from existing A-series SoCs could improve the battery life of portable devices like iPhone and iPad. If it comes to fruition, the strategy would be similar to chips introduced by competing manufacturers, including Google and its Tensor Processing Unit.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Apple Developing Dedicated AI Chip Called Apple Neural Engine