--- title: Inside the M4 Apple Neural Engine, Part 1: Reverse... description: A deep technical reverse engineering of Apple's M4 Neural Engine (ANE), bypassing CoreML to talk directly to the hardware. The authors discovered 40+ private... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/6gsllkdqc twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Inside the M4 Apple Neural Engine, Part 1: Reverse Engineering | daily.dev og:description: A deep technical reverse engineering of Apple's M4 Neural Engine (ANE), bypassing CoreML to talk directly to the hardware. The authors discovered 40+ private... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/6gsllkdqc og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/6gSLLkDqc.png og:image:alt: Post cover image og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Inside the M4 Apple Neural Engine, Part 1: Reverse Engineering **[Ole-Martin](https://daily.dev/sources/xdczd-phg)** · [@ombratteng](https://daily.dev/ombratteng) · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A deep technical reverse engineering of Apple's M4 Neural Engine (ANE), bypassing CoreML to talk directly to the hardware. The authors discovered 40+ private classes in AppleNeuralEngine.framework, cracked the MIL (Machine Learning Intermediate Language) compilation path and E5 binary format, and achieved direct ANE access via the private _ANEClient API without CoreML. Key findings include: the ANE is a graph execution engine with 16 cores and a queue depth of 127, E5 binaries are tiny parameterized programs (~2.7KB regardless of matrix size), IOSurfaces enable zero-copy GPU↔ANE transfers, and an in-memory compilation path exists via _ANEInMemoryModelDescriptor. The series continues with benchmarking (Part 2) and training on ANE (Part 3), with all code published on GitHub. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Apple Launches Core AI for Apple-Silicon Optimized On-Device Generative AI](https://daily.dev/posts/apple-launches-core-ai-for-apple-silicon-optimized-on-device-generative-ai-dfllineyn) · InfoQ · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [MacBook Neo Processor Benchmarks: A18 Pro CPU vs M1 and M4](https://daily.dev/posts/macbook-neo-processor-benchmarks-a18-pro-cpu-vs-m1-and-m4-cumvmy7k8) · Hacker News · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Apple’s Foundation Models and Why They’re Different From Other AI Providers](https://daily.dev/posts/apple-s-foundation-models-and-why-they-re-different-from-other-ai-providers-2gck4h5yv) · Medium · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#machine-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/machine-learning), [#reverse-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/reverse-engineering) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/6gsllkdqc) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","mainEntityOfPage":"https://daily.dev/posts/6gsllkdqc","headline":"Inside the M4 Apple Neural Engine, Part 1: Reverse Engineering","text":"Shared: Inside the M4 Apple Neural Engine, Part 1: Reverse Engineering","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/6gsllkdqc","datePublished":"2026-03-03T07:48:26.118Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T07:48:26.127Z","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Ole-Martin","url":"https://daily.dev/ombratteng","image":"https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/1681525?v=4","description":"Web magician 🪄\nDigital Janitor 🧹","worksFor":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Norwegian Tax Administration","logo":"https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=skatteetaten.no&sz=128"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"EndorseAction"},"userInteractionCount":65360}},"image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--HRgLpUt6--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2003","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"sharedContent":{"@type":"WebPage","url":"https://api.daily.dev/r/vtIrb0DTU"},"isPartOf":{"@type":"WebPage","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/xdczd-phg","name":"Ole-Martin"}} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Ole-Martin","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/xdczd-phg"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Inside the M4 Apple Neural Engine, Part 1: Reverse Engineering"}]} ```