Next-generation Apple Silicon, the M2 chip, finally announced at WWDC 22

Apple today at WWDC 22 announced the latest generation of its Apple Silicon with the M2 chip. The tech giant also announced a redesigned MacBook Air and a new MacBook Pro – both powered by the M2 chip.

M2 chip built on 5nm technology delivers 18% CPU and 35% more GPU performance than M1 chip

The new generation of Apple Silicon is built using 5nm technology and features 20 billion transistors which are 25 percent more than the M1 chip. The increase in transitions helps improve features across the entire chip which in turn, offers improved performance. The memory controller of the chip delivers 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, up 50% from the M1. Apple says the chip features an 18 percent faster CPU, a 35 percent more powerful GPU, and a 40 percent faster Neural Engine than the industry-leading M1 chip.

“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.”

The chip features an 8-core CPU paired with a larger cache. The efficiency cores have also been improved to offer even better performance. Apple says those factors combined allow the M2 to deliver 18 percent greater multithreaded performance than its predecessor. Apple also touts that the recently-announced chip delivers the peak performance of a 10-core PC chip while using just a quarter of the power. And it provides 90 percent of the peak performance of a 12-core PC chip while utilizing just one-fourth of the power.

The chip also features a 10-core GPU, two more than the M1. The GPU helps to deliver a boost in graphics performance “bringing 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.” The higher performance per watt enables the chip to run cool even without a fan, even when playing graphics-heavy games or editing RAW images. And it does all this while offering excellent battery life.

Other tidbits about the M2 chip include the following:

A new image signal processor.
Apple’s latest Secure Enclave.
The Neural Engine can process up to 15.8 trillion operations per second, more than 40 percent in comparison to the M1.
Apple’s ProRes video engine allows playback of multiple streams of both 4K and 8K video.
The media engine of the M2 chip includes a higher-bandwidth video decoder, supporting 8K H.264 and HEVC video.

macOS Ventura, the latest software update for Mac, will be able to utilize the chip to its fullest extent. However, Apple says the combination of the M2 chip with macOS Monterey will offer ” breakthrough performance and productivity for users.”

M2 chip built on 5nm technology delivers 18% CPU and 35% more GPU performance than M1 chip

Asma Hussain