Apple's Canceled Car Project Sparks Powerful AI Chip Legacy
Apple's ambitious self-driving car project never makes it to production, but its technological legacy lives on in the company's current chip lineup. During early development of the vehicle platform, Apple realizes that autonomous driving demands powerful on-device AI processing. Though the dedicated car processor remains unfinished, the research leads directly to the creation of the Neural Engine, which debuts in the iPhone X alongside the A11 Bionic chip.
The Neural Engine initially focuses on computer vision tasks like Face ID, Animoji, and augmented reality features. However, this foundation proves invaluable as Apple brings the technology to its M-series desktop chips, establishing the company as a hardware leader in on-device AI. While Apple's AI software efforts trail behind competitors, the impressive hardware capabilities allow the company to emphasize privacy benefits since less user data needs to leave the device for cloud processing.
Looking ahead, Apple doubles down on AI hardware as a core pillar of its strategy. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, the company skips Pro, Max, and Ultra variants of its upcoming M6 chip entirely. Instead, Apple accelerates development of the M7, which is expected to arrive in the first half of next year and includes an Ultra version capable of supporting up to 1.5TB of RAM for demanding AI workloads.