A Weibo account with a track record of accurate Apple chip details says the A20 Pro, expected to power the iPhone 18 Pro later this year, could deliver a significant graphics boost over the A19 Pro. The main changes are said to include a wider memory interface and an additional GPU core.
The account posted images that appear to show the A20 Pro’s solder joint diagram, which maps the contact points connecting the chip to the circuit board.
Comparing that layout with block diagrams from previous Apple chips, the leaker was able to piece together a rough picture of what’s inside the new processor.
Seven GPU cores and a wider memory interface
The A20 Pro is said to have seven GPU cores, up from six in the A19 Pro. CPU core counts remain unchanged at six, split between two performance cores and four efficiency cores.
The efficiency cores could get a larger shared L2 cache, increasing from 6MB to 8MB, while the performance cores retain 16MB.
More important for graphics may be what’s happening with memory. The A19 Pro uses a 64-bit interface for its LPDDR5x RAM.
That could grow to 96 bits in the A20 Pro, giving Apple 50% more memory bandwidth before accounting for any increase in memory speeds.
Why the memory change matters
A faster GPU isn’t much use if it can’t get data quickly enough. Adding a seventh GPU core would increase the chip’s raw graphics capacity by roughly 16%, but the wider memory interface could give those cores more bandwidth.
Taken together, the extra core, wider memory bus, and potential improvements to the GPU architecture could translate into a 20% to 30% increase in graphics performance.
Apple is also sticking with LPDDR5x rather than moving to LPDDR6, making the wider interface particularly important to the A20 Pro’s bandwidth gains.
What it could mean for games and AI
The difference should be most obvious in games and other graphics-heavy apps, where additional GPU capacity and memory bandwidth can translate into smoother performance.
More bandwidth could also help with Apple’s growing use of on-device AI, which relies on many of the same underlying chip resources as graphics workloads.
The seven-core GPU may not make it into every iPhone 18 model, however. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max are expected to use all seven cores, while the ultra-thin folding iPhone Ultra could have one core disabled due to tighter thermal constraints.
Apple took a similar approach with the iPhone Air, which uses an A19 Pro with one GPU core turned off.
One question remains unanswered: whether the A20 Pro’s CPU or GPU cores incorporate the bigger architectural changes Apple has reportedly been developing under its “Super Cores” initiative. That may have to wait until Apple’s expected September announcement.
