Apple recently launched their most expensive Apple iPad Pro series of tablets in the market with the new M4 chipset. And now a report has revealed that Apple is deploying its M series chips in its cloud servers as well and it seems to be related to the AI features of the upcoming iPhone 16 lineup. Let's get into this in detail.
Apple will handle the demanding AI features of the iPhone 16 series on its own servers with their chips
Apple is working on some Artificial Intelligence (AI) based features for the iPhone 16 series. It was earlier reported that the US company is focusing on running AI features on the device itself for privacy of users' data. The company has also acquired French startup, Datakalab, to make their on-device LLM more capable and efficient. But now Bloomberg's tech insider Mark Garman says in his report that Apple needs to run some demanding AI features in their cloud. So its servers are equipped with Apple's M series chips.
According to Mark Garman, servers running on Apple processors are specifically designed to handle AI-related tasks. Apple is using its M2 Ultra chip in its AI servers, which was included in last year's Mac Pro laptop and Mac Studio. However, the company is reportedly planning to use the new M4 chip in the coming days.
Dedicated chips for servers are in the works
The company is also rumored to be developing dedicated chips for its AI servers, which will use Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's (TSMC) 3 nanometer process nodes. However, it will still take time to complete. This could be one of the reasons behind the placement of the M2 Ultra chip. Mass production of dedicated AI server chips is expected to begin in the second half of 2025.
Choosing cloud servers to run some features (which may work with user data) doesn't match Apple's initial plans, but it's a good move given that the company is leveraging computing and letting companies like Google run their models on their servers. Running features on own servers instead of asking them to do so.
People involved in the development of dedicated server chips say that the chips have special components inside them to protect user privacy. The company reportedly uses a method called “secure enclaves” to isolate data from security vulnerabilities.
