Apple proved to the world that its M-series of chips is no laughing matter last year. Now, reports claim that the successor to that chip is entering production.
The chip is speculatively known as the M2, could see a release as early as July, according to Nikkei Asia. TSMC is building the chip on its five-nanometre process.
We’re expecting the new chip to be more powerful than the M1 and include support for more Thunderbolt ports and multi-monitor support.
The M-series of chips are actually a ‘system on a chip’ or SoC. This means that the GPU, RAM, CPU and other components are all part of the same module. This had led to some improvements like faster access to RAM thanks to Apple’s ‘Unified Memory Architecture.’ It also has some decent GPU chops for an integrated solution, although it’s not beating any top-line discrete solutions yet.
That being said, it wouldn’t be surprising if Apple added more GPU power to its new M2 chips to compete with higher-end workstations. There are rumours that the next MacBook is going to be a new MacBook Pro, which could greatly benefit from this extra performance.
There were even rumours from last year that said Apple is working on a 20-core CPU that would likely smash many of Intel’s offerings. That said, this is pretty ambitious, so we might see a smaller core count in the new Macs.
It’s also speculated that the new MacBook Pros will have a new design with 14-inch and 16-inch screen sizes, feature an SD card reader and a MagSafe plug.
Source: Nikkei Asia
