Apple WWDC 2022 | Apple unveils next generation M2 silicon, now with an 18% faster CPU

(Image Courtesy: Apple)

At WWDC 2022, Apple unveiled its next generation silicon for use in its products, the M2. The system-on-a-chip (SoC) has an 18% faster CPU, 35% faster GPU, and 50% more memory bandwidth than the M1. It also has a faster Neural Engine, that can work 40% better than the previous M1 Chip.

The M2 chip is built on an enhanced, second-generation 5nm processes, that allows Apple to cram in 20 billion transistors on to the node.

This is 25% more transistors than the M1, and Apple says the extra transistors improve performance on system level, like enabling access to a faster memory controller that can do 100GB/s, 50% faster more bandwidth than the M1. It also has 24GB of fast unified memory, allowing it to perform with complex workloads.

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Apple says it has updated the M2 with faster performance cores, and has managed to tune the efficiency cores for faster performance, at less or comparable power requirements of the M1.

M2 delivers 18% faster results in multi-threading performance tests, and the managed power requirements means it does so at the same power level as the M1. Apple says that the M2 can deliver peak performances, comparable to dedicated laptop CPU chips, but at the fraction of the power.

Compared to a 10-core laptop CPU, the M2 manages twice the performance, at the same power requirements. Compared to a 12-core laptop CPU, the M2 matches 90% of the peak performance, with just 1/4th of the power.

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Apple's new GPU on the M2 can be configured with up to 10 cores, which is two more than what the M1 had. With 10 cores, the M2 GPU delivers 35% faster graphics performance at max power.

When compared with integrated graphics chips on a laptop CPU, the M2 GPU is twice as fast, using the same power level. It reaches its max peak performance at just 1/5th power consumption of the laptop integrated graphics chips. The higher performance per watt allows Apple to build fan-less designs, while still maintaining great battery life.

The M2 has a Neural Engine that can process up to 15.8 trillion operations per second, which is 40% faster than the M1. Apple has also updated the media engine with support for 8K H.264 and HEVC video.

It also has Apple's ProRes video engine, that allows for streams of 4K and 8K video to run in parallel, and comes with an updated Security enclave and a new image signal processor (ISP), for better noise reduction.