June 6th 2022
The time has come, Apple announces the 2nd round of their own SoC. The M2 processor family promises more performance with less energy consumption.
Crafted with second-generation 5 nanometer technology, the M2 advances the M1's industry-leading performance-per-watt with an 18 percent faster CPU, a 35 percent more powerful GPU, and a 40 percent faster Neural Engine. It also offers 50 percent more memory bandwidth than the M1 and up to 24GB of fast shared memory. The M2 chip brings all of this—along with new purpose-built technologies and greater efficiency—into the all-new MacBook Air and the updated one 13" MacBook Pro
More transistors, more memory
The system on a chip design (SoC) of the M2 is manufactured with improved second generation 5 nanometer technology and consists of 20 billion transistors - 25 percent more than the M1. The additional transistors improve features throughout the chip, including the memory controller, which delivers 100 GB/s of bandwidth for shared memory - 50% more than the M1. And with up to 24 GB of fast shared memory, the M2 chip can handle even larger and more complex workloads.
Faster energy-efficient performance
The new CPU offers faster performance cores with a larger cache. At the same time, the efficiency cores have been greatly improved and now deliver significantly more power. Together, this results in 18 percent higher multithreaded performance than the M1. The M2 effortlessly handles CPU-intensive tasks with very low power consumption - such as producing music with effect layers or adding complex filters to photos.1 Compared to the latest 10-core PC laptop chip, the CPU in the M2 offers almost double the performance of an equivalent one Power consumption. The M2 delivers the peak performance of the PC chip using only a quarter of the power. Compared to the latest 12-core PC laptop chip - which requires significantly more power to boost performance and is therefore found in thicker, hotter, noisier systems with shorter battery life - the M2 delivers almost 90 percent of the 12-core chip's peak performance just a quarter of the energy consumption.
Comparison Apple M2 and M1:
​ | Apple M2 | Apple M1 |
CPU | 4 Performance-Kerne (16 MB L2-Cache) | 4 Performance-Kerne (12 MB L2-Cache) |
GPU | ​Up to 10 cores (3.6 TFLOPs) | ​Up to 8 cores (2.6 TFLOPs) |
Neural Engine | 16 cores (15,8 TOPS) | 16 cores (11 TOPS) |
RAM (Maximum) | ​24 GB LPDDR5-6400 (100 GB/s) | ​16 GB LPDDR4-4266 (68 GB/s) |
​Media Engine | ​8K | 4K |
Transistors | 20 billion | 16 billion |
Manufacturing process | ​N5P | ​N5 |
Power consumption | ​15W CPU + 15W GPU | 15W CPU + 12W GPU |
Here is the complete overview of the M2
