Apple States Its Latest M2 Is Made on the Second-Generation 5nm Technology, Supports up to 24GB LPDDR5 Memory, With New GPU up to 35 Percent Faster
During its presentation, it was mentioned that the new M2 was made on the second-generation 5nm process, which in this case, TSMC would likely be mass producing the SoC. That is already a significant improvement compared to the M1, which was fabricated on TSMC’s first-generation 5nm node. The advanced manufacturing process now means that the M2 will be more power-efficient than its predecessor, along with having up to an 18 percent faster CPU and 35 percent GPU. The improvement in architecture also means that the new M2 touts 20 billion transistors, features a 16-core Neural Engine that is 40 percent faster than the previous iteration, and is capable is conducting up to 15.8 trillion operations per second. If you look carefully, the M2 is slightly bigger than the M1 in terms of die size, which allowed Apple to cram in all those transistors. Also, for those of you who may not have noticed, the number of CPU cores and their configuration remains the same. Just like the M1, the M2 features four high-performance cores and four power-efficient ones. However, on the GPU side of things, where the M1 was limited to an 8-core GPU, Apple has bumped up that number and given its latest silicon a 10-core GPU, which should bring notable improvements in graphics-related tasks. Of course, the RAM chips will be soldered to the logic board, so customers will have to configure their machines before they confirm their purchase. Aside from this, Apple states that the M2 can deliver a 100GB/s memory bandwidth, and it supports up to a 6K external display. With the amount of horsepower to drive signal to a 6K external monitor, the M2 will likely be able to power multiple low-resolution displays too. In short, the improvements on paper are plentiful, but we will have to see in future benchmarks and comparisons how big of a leap Apple engineered when compared to the M1, so stay tuned for those details. You can take a look at the image to see what the new M2 brings to the table, and let us know down in the comments.