WWDC: Apple surges forward, begins M2 chip transition

I confess I was wrong about this as I’d expected the shift to begin later, but Apple at WWDC 2022 began its transition to M2 processors, raising the Apple Silicon game all over again. The company also introduced a new M2-powered MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro.

The M2 chip, in brief

As expected, the M2 chip is a 5-nanometer chip, just like the M1. Apple’s silicon development teams have still managed to yield further optimizations in the processor, which brings an 18 percent faster CPU, 35 percent more powerful GPU, and 40 percent faster Neural Engine.

Apple’s silicon development wizards have also managed to find a way to give the chips 50 percent more memory bandwidth compared to M1, and up to 24GB of fast unified memory. And all of this is provided in processors that are even more energy efficient.

“M2 starts the second generation of M-series chips and goes beyond the remarkable features of M1,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies.

“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.”

M2 has 25% more transistors than M1

Despite also being built on 5nm tech, the system-on-a-chip (SoC) design of M2 provides 20 billion transistors — 25 percent more than M1.

The additional transistors improve features across the entire chip, including the memory controller that delivers 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth — 50 percent more than M1. And with up to 24GB of fast unified memory, M2 can handle even larger and more complex workloads.

Faster Power-Efficient Performance

The new CPU features faster performance cores paired with a larger cache, while the efficiency cores have been significantly enhanced for even greater performance gains.

[Also read: Apple may introduce three waves of new Macs in 2022]

Together, they deliver 18 percent greater multithreaded performance than M1, so M2 can rip through CPU-intensive tasks using very little power, like creating music with layers of effects or applying complex filters to photos.

Twice the performance of a Samsung Galaxy Book2

Apple claims that compared with the latest 10-core PC laptop chip, the CPU in M2 provides nearly twice the performance at the same power level. It also delivers the peak performance of the PC chip while using just a quarter of the power, the company says, citing tests using preproduction 13-inch MacBook Pro systems with Apple M2, 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and 16GB of RAM against a Samsung Galaxy Book2 360 (NP730QED-KA1US) with Core i7-1255U and 16GB of RAM.

And pretty good against an MSI

When compared to the latest 12-core PC laptop chip — which needs dramatically more power to deliver an increase in performance and is therefore found in thicker, hotter, more noisy systems with less battery life — M2 provides nearly 90 percent of the peak performance of the 12-core chip while using just one-fourth the power. The company says it tested against an MSI Prestige 14Evo (A12M-011) with Core i7-1260P and 16GB of RAM to make this claim.

M2 also features Apple’s next-generation GPU with up to 10 cores. Combined with a larger cache and higher memory bandwidth, the 10-core GPU gives up to 25 percent higher graphics performance than M1 at the same power level, and up to 35 percent better performance at its max power.

Compared with the integrated graphics of the latest PC laptop chip, the GPU in M2 delivers 2.3x faster performance at the same power level and matches its peak performance using a fifth of the power.

The higher performance per watt from M2 enables systems to have exceptional battery life, and run cool and quietly, even when playing graphics-intensive games or editing massive RAW images.

Apple’s Next-Generation Custom Technologies

M2 brings Apple’s latest custom technologies to the Mac, enabling new capabilities, better security, and more:

• The Neural Engine can process up to 15.8 trillion operations per second — over 40 percent more than M1.

• The media engine includes a higher-bandwidth video decoder, supporting 8K H.264 and HEVC video.

• Apple’s powerful ProRes video engine enables playback of multiple streams of both 4K and 8K video.

• Apple’s latest Secure Enclave provides best-in-class security.

• A new image signal processor (ISP) delivers better image noise reduction.

Apple Silicon and the Environment

The power-efficient performance of M2 helps the new MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro meet Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency.

Also read:

• WWDC22: What’s new in macOS Ventura? Quite a lot actually…
• WWDC22: Apple Watch gets big health upgrades
• WWDC, iOS: Lockscreen gains widgets, more ways to share
• WWDC opens doors with good news from AirPods & HomePods
• WWDC22: Apple makes devs API-er with Weather and more
• With iPad OS 16, Apple asks, ‘what’s a computer’?

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