New Apple M2 Processor announced

Brian_B

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Shipping in forthcoming Airs and 13" MBPs (similar to the original M1 roleout)

This iteration has:
TSMC 5nm, 20B transistors.
Up to 24G RAM and 50% higher bandwidth (I'm guessing they added another memory channel)
Up to 10 GPU cores (2 that the previous generation for these products) - gives a 35% improvement in graphics
CPU is improved ~18% with larger caches -- those numbers could get skewed, they just give general "improvements" on power and efficiency cores, and say the net effect is ~18% in multithreaded performance
40% faster neural engine - for all your neuraling needs

It sounds like they may have boosted the power a bit - it mentions that the GPU is 25% faster at the same power level (which, ok, kinda makes sense if you go from 8 to 10 cores, that's a 20% increase in available hardware right there, and you have a wider memory bus that has always been a constraint on IGP)... but they also say it's 35% at max power. There never were any official TDP numbers given by Apple on the M1, nor are there on the M2 - but the Air remains a fanless design. For what it's worth - Apple's graphs tend to cap out around 15W, but as proven before, you can't take Apple's "for illustration" graphs as having any technical meaning behind them.

Doesn't look like anything revolutionary here - no significantly new technology at play. This is the same process node as the M1 (it was also 5nm) - so it looks like we are just seeing some minor changes in the architecture: the additional memory channel, the larger caches on the CPU cores, the reworked neural engine, and the additional GPU cores are the biggest items here.
 
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Found this article this morning - largely the same as I have above, except they reveal the RAM has been bumped to LPDDR5, and the "stock" TDP is 12W, with a 15W boost that the M1 didn't have.

 
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