Apple is reportedly working with Broadcom to develop a custom server processor that will power AI features integrated into iOS.
A report from The Information cites three anonymous sources who say the project has been codenamed “Baltra.” The launch is scheduled for 2026.
Beyond that, the report contains few details, which is not surprising given how secretive the two companies’ operations are. What we do know is that Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, indicated at Apple’s developer conference earlier this year that some Apple Intelligence features will be powered by chips on the device. This while others will run on cloud servers that use the company’s own chips.
Apple often develops its own chips
If Apple is indeed developing its own chips for generative AI, it is not really a surprise. The company has been using its own Arm-based central processors for years. It is also not surprising that Broadcom is collaborating with Apple on such a project, as the company already provides support for some of Apple’s 5G modems.
Why Apple is calling on Broadcom’s expertise again is still unclear, but one theory is that Apple is interested in Broadcom’s designs for semiconductor interconnects. Those enable faster chip-to-chip communications.
Earlier this year, Broadcom introduced a new optical interconnect chip designed for graphics processors and other types of AI accelerators. The company also unveiled its 3.5D packaging technology, which can help chips scale beyond existing limits.
Blueprint for multi-die processors
Broadcom’s 3.5D eXtreme Dimension System in Package (3.5D XDSiP) is a kind of blueprint that allows customers to build multi-die processors, similar to those in Advanced Micro Devices’ MI300X GPUs. These chips combine eight compute chips stacked vertically on four input/output dies responsible for chip-to-chip communication and memory management.
Instead of vertical stacking, Broadcom’s design uses a face-to-face approach, which allows denser electrical interfaces between the chiplets, based on hybrid copper bonding (HBC) technology. Broadcom has indicated that this yields significantly faster interconnect speeds and shorter signal paths. This translates to much higher bandwidth for communication between chips.
According to Broadcom, the largest design of its 3.5D XDSiP technology can support two 3D stacks, a pair of I/O chips and up to 12 high-bandwidth memory (HBM) modules in a single package. Broadcom has announced that the 3.5D XDSiP packaging technology will go into production in 2026.
Given that Apple’s Baltra has a similar timeline, it would not be surprising if Apple’s custom server processor uses the same technology, although that cannot be confirmed. Some of Apple’s chips, such as the M2 Ultra, already use multi-die architectures, by the way.
Much ambiguity
For now, this all remains speculation. We probably won’t learn more about Baltra until it is officially announced, probably not before 2026. That’s because Apple is notoriously secretive about new projects, while Broadcom is equally known for its secrecy about who is using their technology.