See this note for background.
Bottom line: Apple's new "in-house" semiconductor chip, the Apple M1, is considered the new industry standard.
But now this. I knew it but had forgotten.
Last November, Apple introduced the world to the Apple M1 chip in its:
- entry-level 13-inch MacBook Pro;
- MacBook Air
As "revolutionary" as those chips were and their introduction was, Apple is now raising the bar by putting the new Apple Silicon chips into all 2021 MacBook Pro models. Article linked above.
Amazingly, this "Mac transition to Apple Silicon" already has its own wiki page. From the wiki article:
In June 2020, former Intel principal engineer François Piednoël said Intel's "abnormally bad" quality assurance in its Skylake processors, making Apple "the number one filer of problems in the architecture", helped Apple decide to migrate. Intel CTO Mike Mayberry countered that quality assurance problems may arise at large scale from any CPU vendor.
More:
In June 2020, tech analyst Daniel Newman estimated that Apple accounts for some $1.5 billion to $3.0 billion (about 2% to 4%) of Intel's annual revenue, and only 6.9–12% of the PC market in the United States of America and 7% globally.
Longer-term speculation holds that the transition could prompt other PC makers to reevaluate their dependence on Intel's x86 architecture, as Macs sometimes set trends in the personal computing industry.
Back to the MacRumors article:
The higher-end MacBook Pro models are highly likely to feature Apple Silicon chips that are more powerful than the M1, and Apple is believed to be developing options with as many as 16 power cores and four efficiency cores. Apple is also working on custom GPU technology with 16 and 32-core options, which may be used in the new MacBook Pros.
The new MacBook Pro will also restore a lot of features that had been removed over the years, features that Apple users apparently really missed (previously posted).
It's my understanding that "Apple Silicon chips" is an umbrellas term for these new chips, including the M1.
Googling "M2" proved correct.
From February 6, 2021, a tipster suggests: "Apple M1X, M2, A14X, A15, and A15 Bionic lead the speculation for the true identities of four alleged upcoming Apple SoCs."
From another source, January 28, 2021:
The M1 chip in the MacBook Air base variant comes with seven GPU cores instead of eight. Thanks to the fan, the same M1 on the MacBook Pro with all GPU cores enabled can be slightly more powerful. We can expect the M2 to run alongside the M1 instead of succeeding it in the entire lineup right away. Eventually, we could be looking at both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pros with two processor variants, and then the entire lineup offering the M1 as an entry-level chip, with the M2 delivering higher performance.
So far, reports indicate that the chip will be designed on the same 5nm architecture as the current one. It is expected to give a performance boost to the new Mac lineup that will come with it. The company is apparently planning to increase the number of cores as well. It is reported that Apple M2 specifications for the GPU could go as high as 128 cores. The company is apparently testing chips with 16 or 32 cores already.
Multi-core processors? See wiki. Of course.
