Apple has officially announced the M4 chip, marking a significant milestone in the evolution of its technology. The new chip, integral to the all-new iPad Pro, leverages second-generation 3-nanometre technology to enhance power efficiency and drive the device’s ultra-thin design. The M4 chip is equipped with a new display engine that optimizes the color, precision, and brightness of the iPad Pro’s breakthrough Ultra Retina XDR display.
The M4 chip features an entirely new CPU with up to 10 cores and a 10-core GPU that builds on the architecture introduced with the M3. These advancements enable features such as Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and mesh shading on the iPad for the first time, significantly boosting its capabilities for artificial intelligence applications.
Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, Johny Srouji, highlighted that the M4 chip exemplifies Apple’s commitment to developing best-in-class custom silicon that enables groundbreaking products. “The power-efficient performance of the M4, combined with its new display engine, allows for the iPad Pro’s thin design and game-changing display, while substantial improvements across the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, and memory systems make the M4 exceptionally suited for the latest AI-driven applications,” Srouji stated.
The new 10-core CPU is designed to enhance performance and efficiency, featuring up to four performance cores and six efficiency cores with improved branch prediction and deeper execution engines. This enables up to 1.5 times faster CPU performance compared to the previous M2 chip.
The GPU also introduces new capabilities, including Dynamic Caching and hardware-accelerated ray tracing, which bring more realistic visuals to games and graphics-intensive applications. These innovations help maintain Apple silicon’s leading performance per watt, allowing the M4 to deliver the same performance as the M2 with half the power consumption.
The M4 chip includes Apple’s fastest Neural Engine, capable of 38 trillion operations per second, which is 60 times faster than the first Neural Engine in the A11 Bionic chip. This powerful component supports next-generation machine learning accelerators in the CPU and GPU, enhancing the iPad Pro’s ability to handle complex AI tasks, such as real-time audio captions and object identification in videos and photos.
Additionally, the Media Engine supports popular video codecs and introduces hardware acceleration for the AV1 codec, enabling more efficient high-resolution video playback from streaming services.
The M4 chip represents a transformative advancement for the iPad Pro, setting a new standard for performance and efficiency in Apple’s device lineup. With its powerful new features and capabilities, the M4 chip solidifies the iPad Pro’s position as the most potent device of its kind, promising to enhance user experiences significantly and foster new possibilities in content creation, gaming, and AI applications.