Apple Unveils Its Latest Custom Silicon, the 5nm M2
Apple started WWDC 2022 with a bang, unveiling the M2, its latest custom silicon built on 5nm technology.
Apple’s M1 revolutionized the computing industry and revitalized its Mac business, delivering top-end performance at a fraction of the power consumption as traditional desktop processors. After transitioning its lineup from Intel to the M1, Apple is now building on that success with the next-generation M2.
“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 M2 has 20 billion transistors, roughly 25% more than the original M1. As a result, the memory controller delivers 50% more unified memory bandwidth, coming in at 100GB/s. The new system-on-a-chip (SoC) comes with up to 24GB of RAM.
Apple says the new chip is 18% faster in multithreaded performance than the M1 and provides nearly twice the performance of the latest 10-core PC laptop at similar power levels. Meanwhile, the M2 can match the performance of the PC chip while using 25% of the power.
The M2’s GPU gets a significant upgrade, featuring up to 10 cores — two more than the M1. The new GPU delivers up to 25% more graphics power than its predecessor using the same power, or 35% more at peak power.
Samsung recently made headlines for wanting to create a “dream team” to deliver an answer to the M1 by 2025. Apple’s latest WWDC shows the inherent challenge in competing with its custom silicon, as the company is improving it at a rapid pace.
