Apple debuted the M1 chip in the 2020 MacBook lineup, featuring superior power management and long battery life.

In a short period of time, ARM-based laptops began to gain market share, from less than 2% to more than 12% by the end of 2022, according to Counterpoint Research.

Apple dominates the ARM laptop market with a 90% share in 2022. Apple’s migration to its own CPU designs is proving to be a shot in the arm for vendors looking to develop ARM-based solutions.

In addition to Apple, MediaTek and Qualcomm are also actively pushing ARM chips for PCs and servers. Qualcomm is expected to launch its Oryon CPU this fall, and Qualcomm and MediaTek’s solutions could see more than 50 percent year-over-year growth in ARM laptops over the 2024-2025 period.

ARM-based laptops will have up to 25 percent of the market by 2027, which doesn’t bode well for either Intel or AMD.

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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.

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Above: M1 Pro logic board with larger heatsink. Bottom: Smaller heatsink on the M2 Pro logic board (Source: iFixit)

iFixit and Max Tech note that the revised thermal architecture of the new MacBook Pro appears to be a result of the reduced overall footprint of the M2 Pro and M2 Max SoCs in the device. the M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro contain two large memory modules, but the M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pro use The M1 Pro and M1 Max MacBook Pro contain two large memory modules, but the M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pro use four thinner memory modules. Although the M2 Pro and M2 Max dies are physically larger than the M1 Pro and M1 Max dies, the SoC as a whole takes up less space.

Left: M1 Pro SoC; Right: M2 Pro SoC (Source: iFixit)

This means that the M2 Pro and M2 Max MacBook Pro models do not require as large a heat sink as their predecessors. It’s unclear if this will significantly affect thermal efficiency.

The reason for using four smaller memory modules appears to be a supply chain issue. The entire SoC is mounted on a single substrate, so four smaller modules allow Apple to use a smaller substrate, saving material and reducing complexity.

According to Dylan Patel, principal analyst at SemiAnalysis, “At the time Apple was designing, ABF substrates were in short supply. By using four smaller modules instead of two larger ones, they were able to reduce the complexity of routing from memory to SoC within the substrate, allowing for fewer layers on the substrate. This allowed them to further expand their limited substrate supply.”

The M2 Pro and M2 Max offer a 20 percent increase in CPU performance and a 30 percent increase in GPU performance over their predecessors, but as the new chips continue to be based on TSMC’s 5nm process, some users have pointed out that Apple may have sacrificed heat dissipation to improve performance.

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Apple released a short video following the launch of the new MacBook Pro and Mac mini that included the word 2022 in the filename, suggesting that the video may have originally been scheduled to premiere last year.

Some speculate that the 18-minute video was taken from a major event Apple plans to hold in October or November 2022 that will include not only the new M2 Pro and M2 Max Mac products, but other new products as well. In addition, AR files of the new MacBook Pro were created in October 2022.

Apple generally hosts an event in September each fall to announce its latest iPhone and Apple Watch. In the run-up to fall 2022, a growing number of rumors suggest that Apple plans to hold two events between September and December: one for the iPhone and Apple Watch, and another for the Mac and iPad.

However, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman later claimed that Apple canceled its plans for a second fall event and instead released the remainder of its 2022 products via a press release on its website. We’ll see what happens after that, as in October 2022, Apple announced an iPad Pro with an M2 chip and a redesigned 10th-generation entry-level iPad via a press release.

Now it appears that the Mac and iPad launches for the second half of 2022 have indeed been canceled and the products are being split up for press releases.

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Gurman used the word “marginal” in the Power On newsletter, as opposed to the more familiar “small”, which means “very small in amount or effect” in the Cambridge dictionary. The former in the Cambridge dictionary means “very small in amount or effect” (tiny; small amount), and even the word has the meaning of “edge”. It is clear that Gurman is very dissatisfied with the performance improvement of the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips.

This year’s 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros will have the exact same design and features as the current models, including the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips,” Gurman wrote in the newsletter.

Gurman previously reported that the M2 Max chip will have 12 CPU cores, consisting of eight performance cores and four efficiency cores, and 38 graphics cores.

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The GeekBench running sub-library shows that the device model is still “Mac14,6”, and the CPU is also an Apple M2 Max with 12 cores, but the CPU frequency in this test is 3.68 GHz, not Previously 3.54 GHz. The device memory used in the test was also 96GB.

For comparison, the entry-level Mac Studio’s M1 Max chip has 10 cores at 3.2GHz, scoring 1746 single-core and 12154 multi-core. From the score, the single-core performance is 14% faster, and the multi-core performance is improved by up to 22%.

It’s worth noting that the M2 chip powering the 2022 MacBook Air and the latest iPad Pro is only 11 percent faster than the M1, so it wouldn’t be surprising if the M2 Max wasn’t a major upgrade over its predecessor.

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As shown in the figure above, the Apple M2 Max has a 12-core specification, a main frequency of 3.54GHz, and is equipped with 96GB of memory.

For comparison, the Apple M1 Max has a 10-core specification, a GPU with up to 32 cores, and supports 64GB of memory.

In terms of running points, the Apple M2 Max scored 1889 points in single-core and 14586 points in multi-core. In contrast, the M1 Max has a single-core score of 1700-1800 and a multi-core score of 12800.

Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman said that updated versions of Apple’s new MacBook Pro, Mac mini and Mac Pro are expected to be released in the first quarter of 2023, and the series will be equipped with M2 Pro and M2 Max chips.

The 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, released in October 2021, feature a complete redesign with a notch-notch display and the addition of HDMI ports, MagSafe magnets and SD card reader etc.

Apple already introduced the M2 chip in June of this year, which is used in the completely redesigned MacBook Air and the new 13-inch MacBook Pro. The M2 chip uses the second-generation 5nm technology, the CPU speed is increased by 18%, the graphics processor performance is increased by 35%, and the neural network engine is as much as 40% faster.

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