Nearly two years after the release of Apple’s M1 chip – the first ARM-based hardware “Apple Silicon” – we finally have a successor: the M2. While the M1 chip was notable for showing what Apple can achieve with a more efficient mobile design (a dramatic departure from Intel’s energy-hungry x86 processors), the M2’s goal is to improve, not to open new ground. This time it’s all about efficiency.
But given how far Apple has scaled the M1 – to the point where it basically merges two chips together to create the powerful M1 Ultra at Mac Studio – it will be intriguing to see how far Apple can go with the design of the M2 (we are still hear about the updated Mac Pro, remember).
Apple
The M2 chip supports up to 24 GB of unified memory, compared to only 16 GB with the M1, as well as double the memory bandwidth (1000 GB / s). And again it offers 8 cores (4 high-performance, 4 high-efficiency). Apple claims that the efficiency of the cores has been significantly improved and in general you can expect an 18% increase in multi-threaded performance compared to the M1. The M2 chip can be equipped with up to 10 GPU cores, which are 35 percent more powerful than the M1 at its highest power state.
Video editors can make the most of this new chip, as the M2 includes support for ProRes encoding and decoding, along with 6K external displays. The neural motor of the chip is also 40 percent faster, which will significantly speed up AI tasks.
The M2 chip will arrive first in the redesigned MacBook Air, which adds a larger screen and loses its iconic wedge shape, as does the 13-inch MacBook Pro. (Hopefully, it’ll be coming to the Mac Mini soon.) While the M2 may seem like a gradual update, it’s not exactly a bad thing for Apple. The M1 amazed us two years ago and many variations of this chip can still take the latest from Intel and AMD. If nothing else, the existence of the M2 chip should significantly reduce the cost of M1 machines.
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