Apple recently introduced new MacBook Pro models with the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips, the second iteration of the new design since Apple introduced it in 2021. Kate Bergeron, Apple’s vice president of hardware engineering, and Doug Brooks, Mac product marketing, now talk to The Stalman Podcast about the design process for the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips.
During the course of the half-hour conversation, Oil Tube anchor Tyler Stalman and the two Apple executives had an in-depth conversation about how Apple is moving from Intel to developing its own chips, how to integrate new neural and media engines into the chips, and what products Mac users should choose.
Apple executives say that while the M2 Pro and M2 Max still use the 5nm process, they introduce a number of interesting improvements.
The M2 Pro is made up of 40 billion transistors, nearly 20 percent more than the M1 Pro and twice as many as the M2. The chip has a unified memory bandwidth of 200GB/s, twice that of the M2, and comes with up to 32GB of low-latency unified memory. The new generation of 10- or 12-core CPUs consists of up to eight high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores, with multi-threaded CPU performance that is 20 percent faster than the 10-core CPU in the M1 Pro.
The M2 Pro can be configured with up to 19 GPU cores, three more than the GPUs in the M1 Pro, and includes a larger L2 cache. Graphics are 30% faster than in the M1 Pro, resulting in significantly higher image processing performance and console-quality gaming.
The M2 Max has 67 billion transistors built in, 10 billion more than the M1 Max and more than three times the size of the M2. The chip features 400GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, twice that of the M2 Pro and four times that of the M2, and supports up to 96GB of extremely fast unified memory.
The M2 Max features the same next-generation CPU as the 12-core M2 Pro. The GPU is more powerful, with up to 38 cores and a larger L2 cache. Graphics are 30% faster than the M1 Max.
