Apple M4 chip: What’s new with Apple’s newest in-house processor

Apple recently announced several new products at the Let Loose event on May 7. The highlights were the new iPad Air and iPad Pro, the latter of which now features the new Apple M4 chipset, along with the new Tandem OLED display panel of course. The new chip succeeds the Apple M3, which powers the latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models, and also implements a new layout for better performance.

Here’s all you need to know about the new M4 chipset, and what advantages it brings to the new iPad Pro, and how it might shape future Apple products.

A new, improved layout

Unlike the M3 chip, which used an 8-core layout for the CPU and GPU, the new M4 is designed from scratch and now includes a 10-core layout for both the CPU and GPU, with the CPU comprising four performance cores and six performance cores.

ALSO READ: M4 iPad Pro to Apple Pencil Pro: Everything launched at Apple’s ‘Let Loose’ event

With the new design, the M4 is able to use more cores for simpler as well as more resource-heavy tasks, making it more powerful and also more future-proof.

The 10-core GPU meanwhile, is better at rendering graphics faster. It also enables features like hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading, both of which make gaming a much more enjoyable experience on devices like the new iPad Pro.

The Apple M4 is also more efficient than any of its predecessors. Built on a second-generation 3nm architecture, the chipset only uses smaller 3nm transistors. For the uninitiated, smaller transistors translate to more efficient transfer of information within the chipset, and results in the same tasks requiring lesser power.

AI improvements

The Apple M4 still features a 16-core NPU, which is the same as previous iterations, but the brand does mention some under-the-hood changes. These include the M4 being capable of 38 TOPS (trillion operations per second) compared to the 18 TOPS of the Apple M3.

While this makes on-device AI tasks like edge selection in image editing apps or document scanning much more accurate, we believe a lot more AI features could leverage the improved AI performance once Apple announces new software at WWDC 2024 next month.

Which devices will the Apple M4 chip?

Currently the Apple M4 powers the 11-inch iPad Pro and the 13-inch iPad Pro that were announced yesterday. However, the chipset is also likely to power other devices in the future. Upcoming MacBooks, for instance may be powered by the M4 chip later on, while other iPad models like the standard iPad and the iPad Air may be powered by the M4 chip in future generations.

ALSO READ: Apple iPad Pro M4, iPad Air M2 price in India revealed

Of course, Apple may also have more powerful versions of the M4 chip developed by the time the next Mac Pro or MacBook Pro comes out. This could be the M4 Max, or the M4 Ultra. However, none of these are confirmed for now, so we will just have to wait and see.