Apple has announced the M4, its latest processing chip. This chip will be used to beef up performance to the new iPad Pro.
M4 powering the new iPad Pro
Offering a leap in performance over the previous-generation M2-powered iPad Pro, the M4 is made with 28 billion transistors designed with second-generation 3-nanometer technology that makes Apple silicon even more power efficient. The M4 also features an all-new display engine designed with pioneering technologies to enable the precision, color accuracy and brightness uniformity of the Ultra Retina XDR display, a cutting-edge display made by combining the light of two OLED panels.
New 10-core CPU
The M4 features a new up to 10-core CPU, consisting of up to four high-performance cores and six high-efficiency cores. These next-generation cores feature improved branch prediction, wider decode and execution engines in the high-performance cores and deeper execution engines in the high-efficiency cores. Both types of cores also feature enhanced next-generation ML accelerators.
The M4 delivers up to 1.5x faster CPU performance than the powerful M2 in the previous generation iPad Pro, delivering increased performance across pro workflows, whether working with complex orchestral music files in Logic Pro or adding intense effects to 4K video in LumaFusion.
Hardware-accelerated ray tracing available on iPad for the first time
The M4’s new 10-core GPU is designed based on the next-generation graphics architecture of the M3 chip family and features Dynamic Caching, an Apple innovation that dynamically allocates hardware-local memory in real time, dramatically increasing average GPU utilization, resulting in dramatically improved performance for the most demanding pro apps and games.
Hardware-accelerated ray tracing is available for the first time on iPad, bringing more realistic shadows and reflections to games and other graphics-intensive experiences. Hardware-accelerated mesh shading is also built into the GPU, improving geometry processing power and efficiency, enabling more visually complex scenes in games and graphics-intensive apps.
The M4 also delivers significantly improved professional rendering performance in apps like Octane, up to four times faster than the M2. Along with these CPU and GPU improvements, the M4 maintains Apple Silicon’s industry-leading performance per watt. The M4 delivers the same performance as the M2 while consuming just half the power. And compared to the latest PC chips in thin and light Windows laptops, the M4 delivers the same performance while consuming just a quarter of the power.
The most powerful Neural Engine ever
The M4 is equipped with a high-speed Neural Engine. The Neural Engine is an IP block dedicated to accelerating AI workloads within a chip. It is the most powerful Neural Engine in Apple’s history, capable of 38 trillion calculations per second. This is 60 times faster than the first Neural Engine in the A11 Bionic. Combined with the next-generation ML accelerator in the CPU, a high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes the M4 a powerful chip for AI. In addition, with AI features in iPadOS such as Live Caption, which supports real-time voice captioning, and “Look Up Image” which identifies subjects in videos and photos, new iPad Pro users can quickly perform amazing AI tasks on the device. With the M4, iPad Pro can easily separate subjects from backgrounds in an entire 4K video with a single tap in Final Cut Pro, and StaffPad can automatically create sheet music in real time just by listening to a piano performance. It can also run inference workloads efficiently and privacy-preserving, with minimal impact on app memory, app responsiveness, and battery life. The M4’s Neural Engine is said to be the most powerful Apple has ever made, and more powerful than any neural processing unit currently found in any AI-enabled Windows PC.
Advanced media engine for smooth and efficient streaming
The M4’s media engine is the most advanced media engine ever on an iPad, supporting the most popular video codecs including H.264, HEVC and ProRes, and bringing AV1 hardware acceleration to iPad for the first time, enabling even more power-efficient playback of high-definition video experiences from streaming services.
For a better environment
The M4’s power-efficient performance allows the all-new iPad Pro to meet Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency, delivering all-day battery life — less time needing to be plugged in and using slightly less energy over the iPad Pro’s lifecycle.
Apple is a carbon neutral global company and is working to be carbon neutral across its entire manufacturing supply chain and the life cycle of all its products by 2030.
Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies, had this to say about the M4:
“The new iPad Pro with the M4 is a great example of how developing best-in-class custom silicon enables breakthrough products. The M4’s power-efficient performance, coupled with its new display engine, enables the iPad Pro’s thin design and innovative display, while fundamental improvements to the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine and memory system make the M4 ideal for modern AI-driven apps. Together, this new chip makes iPad Pro the most powerful device of its kind.”
