Apple Intelligence may get an M4 upgrade

By Willow Roberts Published November 6, 2024

Apple Intelligence on the Apple iPhone 16 Plus. — Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

According to Nikkei Asia, Apple is talking with its biggest iPhone manufacturing partner, Foxconn, about building new Apple Intelligence servers in Taiwan.

More servers will mean more processing power for Apple Intelligence features, allowing more people to complete more complex tasks. Existing Apple servers are currently powered by the M2 Ultra chip but there are plans to use one of the new M4 chips for future servers.

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It’s uncertain yet whether existing servers will be upgraded to M4 chips, and we also don’t know which version of the chip Apple will be using. It could be the base chip, the Pro, the Max, or an Ultra variant that hasn’t been announced yet. Judging by leaked Geekbench scores, the M4 Max blows the M2 Ultra out of the water, so it could easily power new servers and provide a substantial upgrade for existing ones.

However, Foxconn is already fairly busy with all of the Nvidia AI servers it makes, and some sources are doubtful that the company will be able to take on Apple as well. After products like ChatGPT exploded in popularity, Apple was comparatively slow to jump on the AI bandwagon, with its Apple Intelligence features still in the middle of a staggered rollout.

Apple Intelligence on iPhone 15 Pro. — Nadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends

The desire to build more servers implies Apple wants to dive deeper into artificial intelligence products and services, possibly offering more complex features that can’t be processed on-device. When your iPhone or Mac connects to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute models to borrow more processing power, Apple claims that your data is never stored on the servers or shared with the company.

Instead, the powerful M2 Ultra chips powering the server complete the task and send the results back to your device. If you haven’t really noticed any Apple Intelligence features on your iPhone yet, that’s because all the big ones are coming with the iOS 18.2 update in December.

That includes Genmoji, which will allow you to create custom emoji, and Image Playground for generating images within various apps. Siri will also be getting a ChatGPT upgrade, making the AI features on your iPhone much more noticeable.

Computing Writer

Willow Roberts has been a Computing Writer at Digital Trends for a year and has been writing for about a decade. She has a…

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