Apple Said to Plan Dedicated Chip to Power AI on Devices

Apple got an early start in artificial intelligence software with the 2011 introduction of Siri. Now the electronics giant is bringing artificial intelligence to chips, according to Bloomberg.

Apple is working on a processor devoted specifically to AI-related tasks, according to a person familiar with the matter. The chip, known internally as the Apple Neural Engine, would improve the way the company’s devices handle tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence, such as facial recognition and speech recognition. Apple declined to comment.

Engineers at Apple are racing to catch their peers at Amazon and Alphabet in the booming field of artificial intelligence. While Siri gave Apple an early advantage in voice-recognition, competitors have since been more aggressive in deploying AI across their product lines, including Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home digital assistants.

An AI-enabled processor would help Apple integrate more advanced capabilities into devices, particularly cars that drive themselves and gadgets that run augmented reality. Apple devices currently handle complex artificial intelligence processes with two different chips: the main processor and the graphics chip. The new chip would let Apple offload those tasks onto a dedicated module designed specifically for demanding artificial intelligence processing, allowing them to improve battery performance.

The Apple AI chip is designed to make significant improvements to Apple’s hardware over time, and the company plans to eventually integrate the chip into many of its devices, including the iPhone and iPad, according to the person with knowledge of the matter. Apple has tested prototypes of future iPhones with the chip, the person said, adding that it’s unclear if the component will be ready this year.

An AI chip would join a growing list of processors that Apple has created in-house. The company began designing its own main processors for the iPhone and iPad in 2010 with the A4 chip. It has since released dedicated processors to power the Apple Watch, the motion sensors across its products, the wireless components inside of its AirPods, and the fingerprint scanner in the MacBook Pro. The company has also tested a chip to run the low-power mode on Mac laptops.