The Apple Neural Engine is a part of Apple's chips built to run machine learning models quickly and with little power, on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
In plain words
It is a dedicated unit for running neural networks, which sits on the same chip as the CPU and GPU. It first appeared in the A11 chip in iPhone X in 2017, then spread to iPad and, with M1, to the Mac. Apps use it to run AI on the device instead of sending data to a server.
A quick example
Imagine a photo app that finds faces and pets in your library. Running that model on the Neural Engine lets it sort thousands of photos on the phone itself, quickly and without draining the battery or uploading anything.
Where you'll meet it
- On-device AI features on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
- Apps that run Core ML models locally.
Related
Sources
- DocsDeploying Transformers on the Apple Neural Engine, Apple Machine Learning Research · read 29 Sept 2026
- DocsApple unleashes M1, Apple Newsroom · read 29 Sept 2026
Checked by WhatIsAI against the sources above · 29 Sept 2026. Spotted an error? Report it.