Neural Engine is a series of

AI accelerator A neural processing unit (NPU), also known as AI accelerator or deep learning processor, is a class of specialized hardware accelerator or computer system designed to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning applications, inc ...

s designed for machine learning by

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

. The first SoC including Neural Engine is Apple A11 Bionic for

iPhone 8 The iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are smartphones developed and marketed by Apple Inc. They are the eleventh generation of the iPhone. The iPhone 8 was released on September 22, 2017, succeeding the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, respectively. T ...

, 8 Plus and

iPhone X The iPhone X (Roman numerals, Roman numeral "X" pronounced "ten") is a smartphone that was developed and marketed by Apple Inc. It is part of the List of iPhone models, 11th generation of the iPhone. Available for pre-order from September 26, 2 ...

introduced in 2017. Since then, all Apple A series SoCs have Neural Engine. In 2020, Apple introduced the

Apple M1 Apple M1 is a series of ARM-based system-on-a-chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., launched 2020 to 2022. It is part of the Apple silicon series, as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for its Mac desktops and no ...

for Mac and all Apple M series SoCs have Neural Engine. Apple has stated the Neural Engine in the M4 can perform 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS), an improvement over the 18 TOPS in the M3.

Applications

The Neural Engine is used for real-time AI-driven applications such as Face ID,

Siri Siri ( , backronym: Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) is a digital assistant purchased, developed, and popularized by Apple Inc., which is included in the iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, Apple TV, audioOS, and visionOS operating sys ...

, and

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR), also known as mixed reality (MR), is a technology that overlays real-time 3D computer graphics, 3D-rendered computer graphics onto a portion of the real world through a display, such as a handheld device or head-mounted ...

(AR). It also handles

computational photography Computational photography refers to digital image capture and processing techniques that use digital computation instead of optical processes. Computational photography can improve the capabilities of a camera, or introduce features that were no ...

features, including Smart HDR and Night Mode, by processing vast amounts of sensor data for real-time image enhancements.

Energy efficiency and privacy

The Neural Engine also provides high energy efficiency, allowing real-time AI tasks to be performed with minimal battery consumption. Its on-device processing ensures that sensitive tasks such as facial recognition and voice commands are handled locally, enhancing privacy by keeping user data secure.

Developer tools

The Neural Engine is fully integrated with Apple's Core ML framework, which allows developers to run machine learning models on-device. This integration supports applications like

object recognition Object recognition – technology in the field of computer vision for finding and identifying objects in an image or video sequence. Humans recognize a multitude of objects in images with little effort, despite the fact that the image of the ...

natural language processing Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of computer science and especially artificial intelligence. It is primarily concerned with providing computers with the ability to process data encoded in natural language and is thus closely related ...

, and gesture detection.

References

{{reflist Application-specific integrated circuits Neural processing units Coprocessors Computer optimization Gate arrays