In Tim Cook’s company they made the big announcement yesterday: they have a new process to give life to all their next teams. The question now is, are we really facing a new generation chip? Let’s find out.
For Mac fans, the new Apple M2 was the most exciting announcement of WWDC 2022. It’s the chip that powers the MacBook Air M2 and 13-inch MacBook Pro that will be unveiled next month, and Apple says it’s up to 18% faster than the M1 with the same amount of power.
Sounds good, but is the M2 really as big a generation leap as Apple claims? The question boils down to chip supply in the aftermath of the pandemic, which has upended the timing of virtually every major tech product.
Apple’s new M2 processor is primarily an upgrade to the M1, rather than a successor. This is mainly due to the manufacturing process of the M2. Chipmaker TSMC is behind the manufacturing of the M1 and M2, and Apple says the M2 comes with a node of “second generation 5nm“.
For TSMC, which is by far the largest semiconductor company in the world, what is sought is a full node upgrade between CPU generations. That means shortening the manufacturing process to fit more transistors on the chip and improving efficiency.
The problem is that TSMC delayed its next generation node in 2021, and seemed to be a prime candidate for the Apple M2. The M1 is built on top of TSMC’s N5 node, and the M2 will almost certainly use the N5P node.
The true next-generation node is the N3, a 3nm process that offers up to 15% higher performance and 30% lower power consumption than the N5. In comparison, the N5P represents a 7% improvement with 15% less consumption.
These figures say nothing about the actual performance of the M2, but illustrate the drastic difference between a node upgrade and a node generation jump.
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According to Apple figures, and based on what we know so far about the M2, it will certainly bring performance improvements over the M1, especially in graphics.
But unlike Apple’s first generation of silicon, this won’t be the revolution Apple is trying to sell. We will probably never see something as unique as the M1 from Apple again.
Apple’s M2 looks like a refinement of the M1. That starts with the manufacturing process, which, despite not being a full node jump, still allows Apple to squeeze 20 billion transistors into the die.
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The M1, by comparison, has 16 billion. That wouldn’t be a massive jump in performance on its own, so Apple has made a few other changes to bring the M2 up to snuff.
The question is whether Apple will be able to maintain performance while we wait for the M3. The M1 sustained the company for two years, and the M2 will likely have to as well.
The problem now is that we are facing a generation of processors that might bring only moderate improvements, not performance and efficiency worthy of shaking up the entire CPU industry like the M1 did in 2020.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism