A second generation of Apple computer chips is born.
Apple broadened its processor ambitions on Monday with the new M2, a chip that improves core processing performance 18% over the M1 without hurting battery life in the company's new MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro laptops.
The 18% speed boost comes from the M2's redesigned central processing units. The processor has four fast CPU cores and four efficient cores, a hybrid approach drawn from the smartphone world. And by increasing the number of graphics processing units up to a maximum of 10 instead of eight for the M1, GPU performance is 35% faster. Overall, the new MacBook Air is 38% faster at Final Cut Pro video editing, Apple said.
"We continue to have a relentless focus on power efficient performance," Johny Srouji, Apple hardware team leader, said at the Worldwide Developers Conference.
Power efficiency is crucial to shrinking laptops since the biggest component is the battery. The new MacBook Airs take up 20% less volume but still have a long, 18-hour battery life, Apple said. The company also is using the M2 in a new 13-inch MacBook Pro.
The M2 processor also has a significant memory boost, reaching up to 24GB instead of 16GB for the M1. Memory is important, especially as software gets bigger and laptops have years-long lifespans. M series chips build memory directly into the processor package for fast performance, but it's not upgradable.
Apple debuted the M1 at 2020's WWDC and began shipping it later that year in the earlier version of the MacBook Air. The M1, along with beefier successors called the M1 Pro, M1 Max and M1 Ultra, struck an effective balance between performance and battery life and earned strong reviews.
The M2 doubles down on the same balanced approach, offering updated processing cores that are variants of the chips at the heart of newer iPhones. The new chips continue the gradual ejection of Intel processors from the Mac family of personal computers and could enable the last Intel-powered member, the Mac Pro, to switch to Apple chips.
Designing processors is an expensive, difficult undertaking. But with the M series chips, Apple takes advantage of the A series chip design work it already does for its iPhones and iPads and pays Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to build the chips on its advanced product lines.
The M2 is built on TSMC's 5nm (5 nanometer) manufacturing process, but it's an improved version to the one used for the M1. TSMC is working on a more advanced 3nm process that should let customers squeeze in somewhat more transistors, the core electronics element that processes data on a chip.
The M2 has 20 billion transistors, a 25% increase over the M1, Apple said.
One use of the new transistors is the increased GPU count. Another is an upgraded neural engine -- a chip block used to accelerate artificial intelligence workloads. The new 16-core neural engine can perform 15.8 trillion operations per second, Apple said.
With its own chips, Apple gets more control over the technology foundation of its products -- a principle important to Chief Executive Tim Cook -- and we get better Macs.
Apple's M series and A series chips are members of the Arm processor family. UK-based Arm licenses designs that companies can customize to varying degrees. Arm chips from Qualcomm, Apple, MediaTek, Samsung, Google and others power just about every smartphone for sale.
Because Apple doesn't offer its chips to others, and because the majority of PCs use Intel processors, Intel is somewhat insulated from Apple's shift. Intel is working to modernize its manufacturing, spending tens of billions of dollars on new chipmaking fabs. Intel aims to reclaim its lead over rivals TSMC and Samsung in 2024.