iPhone 18 Pro leak points to major performance gains with next-generation A20 chip

A newly leaked image of the iPhone 18 Pro's motherboard has revealed what could be one of the biggest upgrades coming to Apple's next-generation flagship. The leak suggests the A20 chip will feature a new packaging technology designed to improve thermal management, boost performance and enhance power efficiency over its predecessor.

Apple has traditionally relied on a package-on-package (PoP) design, where the DRAM sits directly on top of the application processor. This approach offers lower power consumption and reduced latency, but it can also result in greater heat concentration within the package.

The leaked motherboard, however, appears to adopt Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module (WMCM) packaging, in which the DRAM is positioned beside the processor rather than on top of it. This design is expected to reduce thermal coupling between the processor and memory while improving heat dissipation during demanding workloads.

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The motherboard is also said to feature LPDDR6 memory paired with a 96-bit memory bus, offering higher bandwidth while improving energy efficiency.

Although the A20 chip is expected to remain similar in size to the A19 Pro, the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) appears to be significantly larger, suggesting Apple is placing an even greater emphasis on on-device AI capabilities.

New architecture for performance upgrade

The A20 Pro, which is expected to power both the iPhone 18 Pro models and the rumoured foldable iPhone, will reportedly be manufactured using TSMC's new 2nm process, known as N2. The chip is expected to deliver up to 15% faster performance while being around 30% more power-efficient than the A19 series.

The N2 process also introduces new super-high-performance metal-insulator-metal (SHPMIM) capacitors into the chip's power delivery system. These capacitors offer more than twice the capacitance density of the previous generation and, when combined with Wafer-Level Multi-Chip Module (WMCM) packaging, are expected to improve overall performance, power stability and energy efficiency.

The Pro and Fold variants are also rumoured to feature 12GB of RAM, 48-megapixel rear cameras and Apple's C2 modem. All three models are expected to debut in September this year.