Apple’s A20 Pro Chip Is More Than A Benchmark Record

With the recent release of the iPhone 18 Pro and its A20 Pro chip, Apple’s silicon strategy is clearer than ever. In my view, the chip is the most important part of this launch, more than any single feature.

(Disclosure: Apple, Intel, AMD and Qualcomm are among the many global technology companies that subscribe to research from Creative Strategies, the firm I founded.)

Raw Speed Still Matters

Start with raw performance. Geekbench 7 results show the A20 Pro’s single-core performance beats the best PC chips from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. It also stays ahead of high-end Android smartphone chips from Qualcomm and MediaTek. Single-core performance matters because so much of what people do on their devices—opening apps, browsing, messaging, editing photos—depends on it.

Apple’s older silicon still holds up. The A18 Pro, a 2024 design, now powers the $599 MacBook Neo. Apple can put a former flagship phone chip in an inexpensive Mac, and have it remain competitive, which says a lot about how deep its silicon lead runs. Because Apple controls both hardware and software, it can tune them together to deliver better performance while using less power. That’s hard for competitors to match when they rely on a mix of suppliers and partners.

Benchmarks, however, measure only the CPU. On a modern system-on-a-chip, or SoC, the CPU is only one part of the silicon. The rest reflects Apple’s priorities.

What Apple Builds Into The Chip

Take battery life. Apple markets battery life in hours of video playback and claims up to 36 hours for the iPhone 18 Pro. That is possible in part because the A20 Pro includes a dedicated video-decoding block, which uses far less power than handling the same work on the CPU or GPU. The GPU has hardware ray tracing for better gaming quality. An image signal processor improves photos.