Apple reportedly building AI chip for iPhone

US tech giant Apple is reportedly developing a dedicated artificial intelligence (AI) chip, called the Apple Neural Engine, that would power AI-related tasks on mobile devices.

"The chip would be used to offload tasks that require sophisticated algorithms related to facial and speech recognition and augmented reality tasks that rely heavily on computer vision."

The chip is also said to improve battery life and the overall performance of Apple devices.

With the new chip, Apple seeks to separate the computationally intensive tasks from the iPhone's processor and graphics chip.

The company is experimenting with wireless charging technologies that could see users charge their iPhones with a Wi-Fi router.

"Apple's patent application for ‘Wireless Charging and Communications Systems With Dual-Frequency Patch Antennas' is a method for transferring power to electronic devices over frequencies normally dedicated to data communications.".

The patch antennas may be used for wireless power transfer at microwave frequencies or other frequencies and may be used to support millimetre wave communications.