Apple recently released its latest M4 series chips, including the M4 Pro and M4 Max, and claims to significantly surpass its competitors in performance. The press conference also updated the MacBook Pro and Mac mini series products. While keeping the appearance design basically unchanged, it has comprehensively upgraded its internal configuration, especially in terms of AI computing power and graphics processing power. The release of the M4 series chips marks Apple's determination to continue to innovate in the field of high-performance computing and also brings consumers a stronger personal computer experience.
This week, Apple launched its latest M4 series chips at the launch conference, marking its strong performance in the personal computer market. Apple claims that devices equipped with M4Pro and M4Max far outperform competitors’ AI PC chips in performance, especially in artificial intelligence task processing.
The M4Pro chip provides up to 14 CPU cores, 10 of which are high-performance cores and 4 are high-efficiency cores, and are equipped with 20 GPU cores. Apple says the M4Pro is 2.1 times faster than Intel's Core Ultra7258V in AI computing power, while the M4Max performs better, claiming to achieve a 4x performance advantage on AI workloads.
Although Apple has not elaborated on the specific workloads mentioned, it is widely speculated in the industry that Apple is mainly focused on bandwidth-constrained tasks, such as large language models (LLMs). M4Pro supports up to 64GB of LPDDR memory, with a bandwidth of up to 273GB/s, while M4Max supports 128GB of memory, with a bandwidth of up to 546GB/s. In contrast, Intel's Core Ultra chip can only support up to 32GB of memory and has a bandwidth of 132GB/s, which also provides support for Apple's comparison.
In addition to the strong performance of AI computing, the M4Pro and M4Max also have significant improvements in other aspects. These chips use TSMC's second-generation 3nm process technology, and Apple claims its CPU core is in the industry's leading position in single-threaded performance. The graphics processing power of the M4 series has also been enhanced, and Apple says ray tracing performance has been twice as high as the previous generation.
In terms of new product launches, Apple has updated its MacBook Pro and Mac mini series. The new MacBook Pro looks similar to the previous generation in appearance, but the internal configuration has been fully upgraded, including higher display brightness and stronger multi-display support. The new Mac mini has been designed while maintaining its compact size, but the number of interfaces has been reduced.
Apple's new M4 chip and updated Mac products this time showcase its continuous innovation and efforts in the field of high-performance computing.
Key points:
M4Pro and M4Max chips have leading performance in AI computing, and M4Max claims to achieve 4 times the performance advantages of Intel chips.
The new MacBook Pro and Mac mini series are updated, with improved configuration, but the appearance has not changed much.
The M4 series chips adopt TSMC's latest 3nm technology, and their single-thread performance and graphics processing capabilities are significantly improved.
In short, Apple's M4 series chips and its supporting Mac product line updates reflect its continued technological leadership in the field of high-performance computing, bringing users stronger performance and smoother user experience. It also indicates a further intensification of competition in the personal computer market in the future.