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Before resigning as the Apple CEO after overseeing 15 iPhone launches over the years, Tim Cook is set to ensure that the iPhone 18 Pro does not have just cosmetic changes over iPhone 17 Pro. And yes, Cook will not be hosting this year's Apple event slated for September 9 2026. Let us see what the iPhone 18 Pro leaks have revealed about the chip. Well, Apple's chip secrets rarely leak this early, or to this extent. A die shot, of all things, has surfaced online, and it is spilling more about the A20 Pro than any spec sheet could. Seven GPU cores, a wider memory interface, and cache sizes that read like a numbers game Apple actually wants to win this time. If the leak holds up, this will not just be an annual bump.
A fresh frontside die shot, posted by a leaker, gives the first real floorplan-level look at the A20 Pro, and the headline number is seven. That's seven GPU cores, up from the A19 Pro's six, which would make this the largest GPU cluster Apple has inserted into an iPhone chip.
The CPU, meanwhile, stays put at six cores- four efficiency, two performance- so the real glow-up is happening on the graphics side, exactly where Apple needs it to keep up with Android's ever-inflating GPU counts.
The chip also carries three separate L2 cache blocks: one for the GPU cluster, and one each for the efficiency and performance CPU clusters. Efficiency cores now share 8MB of L2 cache, a 2MB bump from before, while performance cores hold steady at 16MB, unchanged from the A19 Pro.
The floorplan also backs up earlier chatter about a packaging shift: memory dies now sit beside the SoC instead of stacking on top, with the interface widened to 96-bit while sticking with LPDDR5X rather than jumping to LPDDR6 just yet.
NPU and ISP blocks have not been labelled and their size is unknown, but NPU size may have been doubled if Apple did this time what it did to the M6 chip. This year's CPU placement is hinting at that.