The other day, we told you that rumors call for Apple to celebrate 20 years of iPhone by releasing an all-glass iPhone 20 Pro model in 2027 with an invisible bezel, and no charging or data transfer port. Face ID and the FaceTime cameras will be moved under the display. If all goes according to plan, the iPhone 20 will be quite the looker, setting the standards for iPhone models over the following five to ten years.
But looks aren’t everything, and a fresh report sends us into the weekend thinking about how Apple plans on using an advanced AI memory technology for its 20th anniversary smartphone. According to ETNews, the iPhone 20 will use Mobile High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) which works by stacking multiple DRAM dies vertically. These are connected by vertical interconnects called Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs) which lead to improvements in the transmission speeds of the signals. The faster speeds deliver improved performance compared to older and more conventional technology.
Because HBMs allow RAM dies to be smaller, the technology can help with the development of thinner iPhone models or variants of the iPhone with larger battery cells to generate longer battery life. Additionally, connecting mobile HBM to the GPU for the iPhone 20 Pro models could allow large language models (LLM) to run on-device without consuming too much battery life or raising the phone’s latency.
The tech giant’s suppliers of memory components, Samsung and SK Hynix, are already developing their own versions of the technology, and both will undergo mass production starting next year. Samsung will be using a packaging method called Vertical Cu-post Stack (VCS), while SK Hynix is using a method called Vertical Wire Fan-Out (VFO). The only downside to using this technology is its cost, as it is expensive and could give Apple a reason to jack up prices in 2027 besides the expected new glass slab design.
While Apple’s initial AI initiative, Apple Intelligence, has been mostly criticized for being not as useful compared to what Google and Samsung have offered to date, the truth is that we are in the very early stages of AI on smartphones so the use of HBM on the iPhone 20 could kick off a huge wave of new AI-powered capabilities that we can’t even guess at during this time.
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