Apple M2
System-on-a-chip designed by Apple
The Apple M2 is a series of ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple, launched in 2022. It is part of the Apple silicon series, as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for its Mac desktops and notebooks, the iPad Pro and iPad Air tablets, and the Vision Pro mixed reality headset. It is the second generation of ARM architecture intended for Apple's Mac computers after switching from Intel Core to Apple silicon, succeeding the M1. Apple announced the M2 on June 6, 2022, at Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), along with models of the MacBook Air and the 13-inch MacBook Pro using the M2. The M2 is made with TSMC's "Enhanced 5-nanometer technology" N5P process and contains 20 billion transistors, a 25% increase from the M1. Apple claims CPU improvements up to 18% and GPU improvements up to 35% compared to the M1.
The M2 was followed by the professional-focused M2 Pro and M2 Max chips in January 2023. The M2 Max is a higher-powered version of the M2 Pro, with more GPU cores and memory bandwidth, and a larger die size. In June 2023, Apple introduced the M2 Ultra, a desktop workstation chip containing two M2 Max units. Its successor, Apple M3, was announced on October 30, 2023.
01Design
CPU
The M2 has four high-performance @3.49 GHz "Avalanche" and four energy-efficient @2.42 GHz "Blizzard" cores, first seen in the A15 Bionic, providing a hybrid configuration similar to ARM DynamIQ, as well as Intel's Alder Lake and Raptor Lake processors. The high-performance cores have 192 KB of L1 instruction cache and 128 KB of L1 data cache and share a 16 MB L2 cache; the energy-efficient cores have a 128 KB L1 instruction cache, 64 KB L1 data cache, and a shared 4 MB L2 cache. It also has an 8 MB system level cache shared by the GPU.
The M2 Pro has 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores in the unbinned model, or 6 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores in the binned model. The M2 Max has 8 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores in both the binned and unbinned SKUs, and operates at a slightly higher 3.7GHz clock speed in some models.
GPU
The M2 integrates an Apple designed ten-core (eight in some base models, nine in the M2 iPad Air) graphics processing unit (GPU). Each GPU core is split into 16 execution units, which each contain eight arithmetic logic units (ALUs). In total, the M2 GPU contains up to 160 execution units or 1280 ALUs, which have a maximum floating point (FP32) performance of 3.6 TFLOPs.
The M2 Pro integrates a 19-core (16 in some base models) GPU, while the M2 Max integrates a 38-core (30 in some base models) GPU. In total, the M2 Max GPU contains up to 608 execution units or 4864 ALUs, which have a maximum floating point (FP32) performance of 13.6 TFLOPS.
The M2 Ultra features a 60- or 76-core GPU with up to 9728 ALUs and 27.2 TFLOPS of FP32 performance.
Memory
The M2 uses 6,400 MT/s LPDDR5 SDRAM in a unified memory configuration shared by all the components of the processor. The SoC and RAM chips are mounted together in a system-in-a-package design. 8 GB, 16 GB and 24 GB configurations are available. It has a 128-bit memory bus with 100 GB/s bandwidth, and the M2 Pro, M2 Max, and M2 Ultra have approximately 200 GB/s, 400 GB/s, and 800 GB/s respectively.
Other features
The M2 contains dedicated neural network hardware in a 16-core Neural Engine capable of executing 15.8 trillion operations per second. Other components include an image signal processor, a NVM Express storage controller, a Secure Enclave, and a USB4 controller that includes Thunderbolt 3 (Thunderbolt 4 on Mac mini) support. The M2 Pro, Max and Ultra support Thunderbolt 4.
Supported codecs on the M2 include 8K H.264, 8K H.265 (8/10bit, up to 4:4:4), 8K Apple ProRes, VP9, and JPEG.
02Products that use the Apple M2 series
M2
- MacBook Air (13-inch, M2, 2022) (8 or 10 core GPU)
- MacBook Air (15-inch, M2, 2023) (10 core GPU)
- MacBook Pro (13-inch, M2, 2022) (10 core GPU)
- iPad Pro (11-inch, 6th generation) (2022) (10 core GPU)
- iPad Pro (12.9-inch, 6th generation) (2022) (10 core GPU)
- Mac Mini (2023) (10 core GPU)
- Vision Pro (2024) (10 core GPU)
- iPad Air (6th generation) (2024) (9 core GPU)
M2 Pro
M2 Max
M2 Ultra
- Mac Studio (2023)
- Mac Pro (2023)
03Variants
The table below shows the various SoCs based on the "Avalanche" and "Blizzard" microarchitectures.
| Variant | CPU cores | GPU | Neural Engine (NPU) | LPDDR5-6400 memory | Transistor count |
Used in | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P | E | Cores | EU | ALU | Cores | Performance | Size (GB) | Bandwidth | |||
| A15 Bionic | 2 | 3 | 5 | 80 | 640 | 16 | 15.8 TOPS | 4 | 34.1 GB/s | 15 billion | Apple TV 4K (3rd generation) |
| 4 | 4 | 64 | 512 | iPhone SE (3rd generation) / iPhone 13 mini / iPhone 13 | |||||||
| 5 | 80 | 640 | 6 | iPhone 13 Pro / 13 Pro Max / 14 / 14 Plus iPad mini (6th generation) | |||||||
| M2 | 4 | 8 | 128 | 1024 | 8-24 | 102.4 GB/s | 20 billion | MacBook Air (13-inch, M2, 2022) | |||
| 9 | 144 | 1152 | iPad Air (M2) | ||||||||
| 10 | 160 | 1280 | MacBook Air (13-inch, M2, 2022 / 15-inch, M2, 2023) MacBook Pro (13-inch, M2, 2022) Mac Mini (2023) iPad Pro (11-inch, 4th gen) / (12.9-inch, 6th gen) Vision Pro (2024) | ||||||||
| M2 Pro | 6 | 16 | 256 | 2048 | 16-32 | 204.8 GB/s | 40 billion | Mac Mini (2023) MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch, 2023) | |||
| 8 | |||||||||||
| 19 | 304 | 2432 | |||||||||
| M2 Max | 30 | 480 | 3840 | 32-96 | 409.6 GB/s | 67 billion | MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch, 2023) Mac Studio (2023) | ||||
| 38 | 608 | 4864 | |||||||||
| M2 Ultra | 16 | 8 | 60 | 960 | 7680 | 32 | 31.6 TOPS | 64-192 | 819.2 GB/s | 134 billion | Mac Studio (2023) Mac Pro (2023) |
| 76 | 1216 | 9728 | |||||||||
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Apple M2”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Apple M2.jpg by Henriok, CC0
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