The redesigned MacBook Air laptop and an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro are both powered by the new M2 chipset, which helps delivers 18% faster CPU, a 35% more powerful GPU, and a 40% faster Neural Engine, compared to M1
M2 features 20 billion transistors, which is 25% more than the M1 chipset. (Credit: Apple Inc.)
Apple has introduced the M2 chip that has been built using second-generation 5-nanometer technology and is specifically designed for the Mac.
According to the tech major, the new chipset marks the start of the next generation of Apple silicon.
The company claimed that M2 helps in delivering an 18% faster central processing unit (CPU), a 35% more powerful graphics processing unit (GPU), and a 40% faster Neural Engine, compared to its predecessor, M1.
The Neural Engine of the new chipset can process up to 15.8 trillion operations per second, which is said to be 40% more than M1.
Besides, the new chip drives 50% more memory bandwidth, when compared to the M1 chip, and a fast unified memory of up to 24GB, said Apple. This enables the chip to handle much heavier and more complex workloads.
The redesigned MacBook Air laptop and an updated 13-inch MacBook Pro are both powered by the new chipset from the company.
Apple hardware technologies senior vice president Johny Srouji said: “M2 starts the second generation of M-series chips and goes beyond the remarkable features of M1.
“With our relentless focus on power-efficient performance, M2 delivers a faster CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine. And along with higher memory bandwidth and new capabilities like ProRes acceleration, M2 continues the tremendous pace of innovation in Apple silicon for the Mac.”
Apple said that the system-on-a-chip (SoC) design of M2 features 20 billion transistors, which is 25% more than the M1 chipset.
The additional transistors are said to enhance features across the entire chip. This includes the memory controller that provides 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth.
The CPU in M2, when compared with the latest 10-core PC laptop chip, delivers almost twice the performance at the same power level. Furthermore, the new chipset drives the peak performance of the PC chip while using only 25% of the power.
M2 also comes with Apple’s next-generation GPU with up to 10 cores, which is twice what M1 has. The 10-core GPU in combination with a larger cache and higher memory bandwidth is said to provide a huge boost in graphics performance.