As rumoured, Apple unveiled some big news on Tuesday, revealing its latest Apple Silicon chips, the M2 Pro and M2 Max.
These latest next-gen chips are now powering new MacBook Pro and Mac mini models announced this morning.
“Only Apple is building SoCs like M2 Pro and M2 Max. They deliver incredible pro performance along with industry-leading power efficiency,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. “With an even more powerful CPU and GPU, support for a larger unified memory system, and an advanced media engine, M2 Pro and M2 Max represent astonishing advancements in Apple silicon.”
M2 Pro now has offers up to 12-core CPU and 19-core GPU with up to 32GB of unified memory, built on a second-generation 5-nanometer process technology, with 40 billion transistors, almost 20% more than the M1 Pro. This chip is now available on the Mac mini for the first time.
Apple says M2 Pro has double the memory bandwidth of M2 at 200GB/s. Its 10 or 12-core CPU has 8 high performance cores and 4 high-efficiency cores, resulting in faster multithreaded CPU performance.
The GPU in the M2 Pro can be customized for up to 19 cores–3 more than its predecessor the M1 Pro—and a larger L2 cache.
The new M2 Max has 67 billion transistors—10 billion more than M1 Max—and 400GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, twice that of M2 Pro and 4x that of M2.
M2 Max can have up to 38-core GPU, double the unified memory bandwidth and up to 96GB of unified memory. Apple says the M2 Max is the “world’s most powerful and power-efficient chip for a pro laptop,” thanks to its industry-leading performance per watt.
The M2 Max has the same next-gen 12-core CPU as the M2 Pro, but the GPU speeds are up to 30% faster than its predecessor.
Both chips get a new faster 16-core Neural Engine and media engine and also next-generation Secure Enclave.
M2 Pro and M2 Max are now available for the 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro.
Below, you can see how much faster the M2 Pro is in Photoshop and Xcode workflows on a 16-inch MacBook Pro, versus the previous M1 Pro and Intel Core i9. Apple is showing improvements of 40% and 25% compared to the previous M1 Pro:
Apple says M2 Pro and M2 Max bring new standards for power efficiency, taking battery life in the MacBook Pro up to 22 hours, the longest ever in a Mac.
…developing, more to follow
