Apple releases M4 chip: 10-core CPU + 10-core GPU

On May 7, 2024, Apple hosted a special event named “Let Loose”, where they unveiled the all-new iPad Pro and iPad Air. Notably, the latest iPad Pro was equipped with the M4 chip for the first time, enhancing the device’s performance dramatically.

The M4 chip, crafted using the second-generation 3nm process, integrates 28 billion transistors and adopts a System on a Chip (SoC) architecture, which significantly improves energy efficiency and contributes to the iPad Pro’s ultra-slim design. It features a 10-core CPU with up to four performance cores and six efficiency cores. The new generation cores incorporate enhanced branch prediction technology. The high-performance cores utilize wider bandwidth decoding and execution engines, while the high-efficiency cores feature deeper execution engines. Accompanied by a 10-core GPU built on the architectural foundations of the M3 series chips, it introduces dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and ray tracing capabilities to the iPad for the first time. It also includes Apple’s fastest neural engine to date, capable of processing up to 38 trillion operations per second, and a new generation machine learning (ML) accelerator. The advanced media engine supports AV1 decoding, as well as popular video codecs like H.264, HEVC, and ProRes.

Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies, Johny Srouji, stated that creating industry-leading custom chips enables the development of groundbreaking products. The new iPad Pro equipped with the M4 chip exemplifies this, as its energy-efficient performance combined with a new display engine achieves a sleek design and revolutionary display capabilities. Comprehensive enhancements to the central processing unit, graphics processing unit, neural engine, and memory system make the M4 the ideal chip to power the latest AI applications, rendering the iPad Pro a device without parallel.