Tech giant Apple introduces M4 chip

Built using second-generation 3-nanometer technology, M4 is a system on a chip (SoC) that advances the industry-leading power efficiency of Apple silicon and enables the incredibly thin design of iPad Pro.

It also features an entirely new display engine to drive the stunning precision, colour, and brightness of the breakthrough Ultra Retina XDR display on iPad Pro.

A new CPU has up to 10 cores, while the new 10-core GPU builds on the next-generation GPU architecture introduced in M3, and brings Dynamic Caching, hardware-accelerated ray tracing, and hardware-accelerated mesh shading to iPad for the first time.

M4 has Apple’s fastest Neural Engine ever, capable of up to 38 trillion operations per second, which is faster than the neural processing unit of any AI PC today.

Combined with faster memory bandwidth, along with next-generation machine learning (ML) accelerators in the CPU, and a high-performance GPU, M4 makes the new iPad Pro an outrageously powerful device for artificial intelligence.

“The new iPad Pro with M4 is a great example of how building best-in-class custom silicon enables breakthrough products,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. “The power-efficient performance of M4, along with its new display engine, makes the thin design and game-changing display of iPad Pro possible, while fundamental improvements to the CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, and memory system make M4 extremely well suited for the latest applications leveraging AI. Altogether, this new chip makes iPad Pro the most powerful device of its kind.”

Delivering a giant leap in performance over the previous iPad Pro with M2, M4 consists of 28 billion transistors built using a second-generation 3-nanometer technology that further advances the power efficiency of Apple silicon.

M4 also features an entirely new display engine designed with pioneering technologies, enabling the stunning precision, color accuracy, and brightness uniformity of the Ultra Retina XDR display, a state-of-the-art display created by combining the light of two OLED panels.

M4 has a new up-to-10-core CPU consisting of up to four performance cores and now six efficiency cores.

The next-generation cores feature improved branch prediction, with wider decode and execution engines for the performance cores, and a deeper execution engine for the efficiency cores.

And both types of cores also feature enhanced, next-generation ML accelerators.

M4 delivers up to 1.5x faster CPU performance over the powerful M2 in the previous iPad Pro.1 Whether working with complex orchestral music files in Logic Pro or adding highly demanding effects to 4K video in LumaFusion, M4 boosts performance across pro workflows.

1) tandem OLED support, 2) brightness and color compensation, and 3) 10Hz-120Hz ProMotion support.

A graphic representing the new M4 chip, highlighting its four performance cores and detailing their 1) improved branch prediction, 2) wider decode and execution engines, and 3) next-generation ML accelerators. The graphic also highlights M4’s six efficiency cores, and details their 1) improved branch prediction, 2) deeper execution engine, and 3) next-generation ML accelerators.
A graphic representing the new M4 chip, highlighting its 10-core GPU and detailing its 1) next-generation architecture, 2) Dynamic Caching, 3) mesh shading, and 4) ray tracing.

A graphic representing the new M4 chip, highlighting its Neural Engine and detailing its 1) 16-core design and 2) that it’s faster and more efficient.