Apple is preparing to make a significant change with the A20 Pro chip, which is expected to be used in the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max models. The company may abandon the 64-bit memory bandwidth standard it has been using for about 13 years and switch to 96-bit LPDDR6 technology.

This breakthrough is seen as a critical step to increase the performance of the artificial intelligence models running on the device and the renewed Siri infrastructure. Compared to branch resources, the use of 96-bit memory bus offers a significant speed advantage for memory-oriented processes.

New Era in Memory Technology

According to leaks, the switch to 96-bit bandwidth in the A20 Pro chip creates a major break in Apple’s long-standing technical preferences. While experts state that 96-bit LPDDR5X RAMs have physically larger dimensions, they point out that LPDDR6 technology offers 96-bit support in the same size.

The fact that there is no significant increase in DRAM size in the leaked A20 Pro schematics strengthens the possibility that Apple will prefer the more efficient LPDDR6 standard. This migration provides the bandwidth needed for Apple Intelligence and on-device AI processes to run more efficiently.

Cost Savings on Storage Units

This technological upgrade by Apple on the memory side obviously leads to an increase in device costs. It is assumed that DRAM costs for iPhone 18 Pro models may increase from $ 39 to $ 145 compared to the previous generation iPhone 17 Pro.

Wanting to balance this high cost increase, Apple appears to be following a different strategy in storage units. While the company continues to use TLC NAND in 256GB and 512GB models, it turns to lower-cost QLC NAND technology in 1TB and 2TB capacity iPhone 18 Pro models.

This situation is interpreted as Apple’s effort to balance increasing memory costs with preferences on the storage side.

What do you think about Apple’s use of high-performance memory and this cost-oriented choice in the storage unit?