Apple takes control of all core chips in iPhoneAir with new arch prioritizing AI (www.cnbc.com)

Apple’s new iPhone Air ships with a trio of firsts that signal a major push into on‑device AI: the A19 Pro SoC, a first‑party wireless chip (N1) across the iPhone 17 family, and a second‑gen modem (C1X). The A19 Pro changes Apple’s chip architecture by embedding neural accelerators into each GPU core—bringing dense matrix math and tensor‑style neural processing into the GPU pipeline—so rendering and ML instructions can run seamlessly on the same microprogram. Apple says this raises on‑device ML performance near MacBook Pro class, enabling features like AI‑driven camera behaviors while saving power. The A19 Pro is built on TSMC’s 3nm node and paired with new thermal design (vapor chamber + aluminum unibody) to handle the added compute. The move completes Apple’s strategy to control all core phone silicon (previously Broadcom/Qualcomm territory), with the N1 boosting energy‑efficient Wi‑Fi and device location awareness and the C1X promised as faster and more power‑efficient than prior Qualcomm modems. For AI/ML, tighter vertical integration means better optimized inference, lower latency, improved privacy, and a developer target that could favor on‑device models and APIs. It also has market implications—potentially phasing out third‑party modems and wireless parts, shifting fabrication toward U.S. TSMC capacity, and setting a new baseline for phone ML hardware that competitors will need to match.