Newly leaked A20 Pro die shot suggests major GPU boost for iPhone 18 Pro and Apple's first foldable iPhone

A new frontside die shot circulating on Weibo, posted by leaker 白饭炒白米饭, gives the first floorplan-level look at Apple's A20 Pro. The annotated image labels seven GPU cores and a six-core CPU comprising four efficiency cores and two performance cores, with the CPU core count unchanged from the previous generation. It also identifies three separate L2 cache blocks: one shared by the GPU cluster and two allocated to the efficiency and performance clusters. The efficiency cores reportedly share an 8 MB L2 cache, 2 MB more than in the previous generation, while the performance cores share a 16 MB L2 cache, unchanged from the A19 Pro.

If the leaked GPU core count is accurate, seven cores would make this the largest GPU cluster Apple has shipped in a phone SoC, up from the A19 Pro's six-core GPU. This increase in core count would be crucial for Apple to keep pace with the ever-increasing GPU sizes on the Android side.

The floorplan is consistent with earlier reporting on the chip's packaging shift, with the memory dies placed beside the SoC instead of being stacked and the memory interface widened to 96 bits while retaining LPDDR5X rather than adopting LPDDR6 for this generation. The die itself does not include labeled NPU or ISP blocks in this crop, so their size and position relative to the CPU/GPU cluster cannot be confirmed from this image alone. That said, it's plausible that the NPU has been enlarged this generation, possibly doubling in size, as with the Apple M6. This would explain the shift in the CPU's placement compared with the previous generation.

As with all pre-launch die shots, this image comes from an unverified leak likely traceable to engineering samples or internal documentation rather than final retail silicon. Floorplans can also change before mass production. The A20 Pro is expected to debut in the iPhone 18 Pro lineup and the upcoming foldable iPhone, both scheduled for September 9.