It powers the new iPad Pro with an OLED display. Apple promises a significant increase in performance compared to the old iPad Pro. The new Neural Engine is also said to “set a new benchmark” for AI processing capabilities.
Apple also has at its iPad event introduced the new mobile processor M4. It delivers similar performance to the MacBook Air’s M3 processor, but offers significantly more AI functions, according to the company. Apple is using the chip in the new iPad Pro, whose predecessor is powered by the Apple M2.
Compared to the M2, the Apple M4 is said to be up to 150 percent faster. In addition, the memory bandwidth increases by a factor of 1.2. When it comes to 3D rendering, Apple even claims up to four times higher performance.
The M4 is manufactured using a “second generation” 3-nanometer process. It should deliver even more energy-efficient chips than older production processes. The bottom line is that the M4 should consume significantly less power than the M3 with the same performance.
The M4’s display engine is also new. It was optimized for the OLED display of the iPad Pro and allows variable refresh rates between 10 and 120 Hz. According to Apple, this not only relieves the load on the processor, but also on the battery.
In addition, the chip was equipped with new machine learning accelerators. They are intended to improve features such as Face ID, QuickType suggestions and image content recognition.
Apple provides the four performance and six efficiency cores of the M4 with a 10-core GPU. The M4 also supports hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing. According to Apple, these technologies are available for the first time on an iPad.
The M4 chip also features a new 16-core Neural Engine capable of processing 38 trillion operations per second. This powerful component, combined with the CPU and GPU, is, according to Apple, an “outrageously powerful chip for AI.” The M4 is intended to surpass all Neural Processing Units (NPUs) currently available in AI PCs and set a new benchmark for AI processing functions in consumer electronics.