The M2 SoC was not a part of Apple’s ‘Peek Performance’ event, but it will likely see a launch later this year in an updated family of Macs. Not just this, but TSMC’s 4nm process will be leveraged in making this custom chipset, according to the latest report.
M2 Tipped to Be Direct Successor to M1, With Earlier Reports Claiming an 8-Core CPU Expected to Be Part of the Internal Specifications
The Apple Silicon lineup was earlier reported to see an update every 18 months, so according to that timeline, the M2 would see a launch later this year. Before the ‘Peek Performance’ event kicked off, there were talks about a potential announcement of the SoC, but instead of that, the M1 Ultra materialized, indicating that portable Macs with the new custom silicon were still months away.
According to a report from DigiTimes, the M2 will be based on TSMC’s 4nm process, surpassing the Taiwanese manufacturer’s 5nm architecture in both performance and power efficiency. It is also the same process that companies like Qualcomm will mass produce the upcoming Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. With the M2, we expect to see slight improvements over the M1, though we should remind readers that those changes may not be astronomical.
Where the M1 was limited up to an 8-core GPU, the M2 could feature up to a 10-core GPU, but the number of CPU cores might be retained at eight, where four will be performance cores while the remaining four will be the power-efficiency variants. Apple is said to be prepping a MacBook Pro with the new chipset, but like the M1 version, rumors claim that there will be no change to its design.
A redesigned MacBook Air was slated for a launch later this year, with numerous sources claiming it would be treated with the M2. Unfortunately, notable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier predicted that Apple would continue using the M1 as it did with the previous model, but a design change is still on the cards. Just like how it announced the M1 Pro and M1 Max alongside the redesigned 2021 MacBook Pro models, Apple could host an event in the fourth quarter of the year to announce the new SoC, as well as showcase the products that use the M2.
News Source: DigiTimes
