Apple Developing Custom Chips for Smart Glasses, Advanced Macs, and AI Servers

Apple is working on in-house chipsets that will power its upcoming range of smart devices, including smart glasses, advanced Macs, and artificial intelligence (AI) servers. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company's in-house silicon team has become a key part of its product development strategy, especially after Apple stopped relying on Intel processors for its Mac computers in 2020 and started using its own chips.

The custom chips for smart glasses draw inspiration from the technology used in the Apple Watch, which is less power-consuming. Apple has restructured the chip to become even more efficient by dropping some unnecessary parts, allowing the glasses to operate for long periods without draining up too much battery. The chip is also being designed to manage multiple cameras, which could enable features like photo and video capture.

The smart glasses are expected to offer basic smart features such as taking pictures, playing audio, making phone calls, and accessing a voice assistant, much like Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses. While Apple has long been interested in building fully augmented reality (AR) glasses that overlay digital content onto the real world, this technology is still not ready for everyday use. Instead, Apple may start with a simpler version of smart glasses and gradually move toward AR as the technology improves.

Apple aims to begin mass production of the chip by late 2026 or early 2027, which suggests that the smart glasses could be released within the next two years. As with other Apple chips, manufacturing will be handled by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), one of Apple’s key partners.

The project is under development and is codenamed"N401," replacing the earlier name "N50." The company is also said to have run internal testing and done user studies to gather feedback. 

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