Apple has detailed how its new A19 Pro, N1 wireless, and C1X modem chip will boost iPhone performance, efficiency, and privacy.
Apple has said its new suite of chips is designed to give the iPhone 17 series full control over
AI, efficiency and privacy.
The Cupertino-based tech company introduced the A19 series of processors its latest devices, as well as its first wireless chip and updated modem – the N1 and C1X respectively – and Apple has explained this move will give their handsets improved performance in areas like AI tasks.
Speaking with CNBC, Apple vice president of platform architecture Tim Millet said of the new chips: “That’s where the magic is. When we have control, we are able to do things beyond what we can do by buying a merchant silicon part.”
The A19 Pro chip introduces neural accelerators integrated into each GPU core, meaning what had previously been handled separately by Apple’s Neural Engine can now be handled more broadly and more efficiently in graphics-related workloads.
Arun Mathias, Apple’s VP of Wireless Software Technology, explained that the new wireless chip N1 now handles tasks like location awareness more intelligently.
He said: “One of the things people may not realize is that your Wi-Fi access points actually contribute to your device’s awareness of location, so you don’t need to use GPS, which actually costs more from a power perspective.
“By being able to do this more seamlessly in the background, not needing to wake up the application processor as much, we can do that significantly more efficiently.”
Mathias also claimed that the second-generation C1X modem is “up to twice as fast” as the original C1 – introducing in February with the iPhone 16e – while consuming “30 per cent less energy” than the Qualcomm modem used in the iPhone 16 Pro.
Apple details new iPhone chips and AI plans
