M2 or M1X is the Apple Silicon Mac to Wait For

 Apple will introduce its Silicon Mac in the coming year, which may feature an M2 or M1X chip. Also, the tech giant may offer an optional discrete graphics card.

Apple has begun the transition from Intel processors to its own designed Apple Silicon processors in its devices. It has been started with 13-inches MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and MacBook Air. All these devices will contain the M1 processors designed by Apple. Apple-designed M1 is based on a 5nm 8-core System-on-Chip with 16 million transistors making it a useful tool. But what about the next chip from Apple, M2 or M1X. It could be expected that M2 or M1X could bring the level of performance to rival desktops, which are based on AMD and Intel CPUs.

Graphics is another point of concern with the desktop system. However, M1, designed by Apple, has beaten various other graphics processing units but is falling behind most discrete graphics processing units significantly supercharge top desktop computers.

In Nov 2020, the tech giant introduced MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini powered by its own designed System-on-a-chip M1 processors. M1 is an advanced processor with a unified architecture eliminating movement of data in a repetitive way between Neural Core, CPU, and GPU. The advanced processor is improving both efficiency and speed in the devices. Apple has claimed that its M1 chip has the highest performance on every watt, and MacBook Pro has provided a good example by giving 20 hours of performance on a single charge. Additionally, the newly introduced Mac devices offer six times better graphics and three times better speed than its previous generation models based on Intel processors.

Looking at all these advantages offered by M1 SoC, it is undoubtedly exciting and at the same time challenging to anticipate regarding the performance that the next Apple chip M1X or M2 will provide. Further, the tech giant may introduce a MacBook Pro of 16 inches or even an iMac device. While introducing these models with enhanced features will also require improved graphics and enhanced performance to beat the Intel processors. According to some reports, Apple is going to 5NP in the year 2021, a form of a 5-nanometer processor to enhance the performance. TSMSC has used it to create A14, used in the M1 and the iPhone 12.

As per a specific report that has been leaked, the tech giant will introduce an A15 chip in iPhone 13 but seeing that the company will introduce 5NP in 2021, it is more sensible to think that the next SoC will use this latest technology. N5P is expected to provide higher performance of about 7 percent compared to the lower power of 15 percent or N5. Since extraordinary battery life is already present in the device, the company may focus on maximizing speed.

However, a jump of about A7 percent is not enough while challenging desktop CPUs, but this is not the only improvement or change to come. Apple has always been optimizing its SoC in every generation. For example, you can see performance improvements of about 20 percent in its A-series every year.

M2 SOC: Apple’s Potential Enhancements

M1 SoC of Apple can be considered as the breakthrough for the Mac devices. It is providing the ability to the company to integrate enhancements and improvements throughout the system. The company can make improvements and changes to macOS, its apps, and even at the most basic level when it will lack performance at the user level. Besides, it can design improvements with much more optimizations in the silicon chip directly. The M2 or M1X that is anticipated to be used in the upcoming 16-inches MacBook or an iMac will be the next version of M1 but will be expanded with more GPU and CPU enhancements. Additionally, processors meant for particular purposes often offer better performance and speed than general-purpose processors.

If looking at the naming conventions that the company follows with A-series chips, it can be concluded that its processor at a desktop level can be called M1Z or M1X  and M2 for the second generation SOC. The iPad tablets at entry-level come with the similar SoC used in the iPhone. The chips that the company used in the models based on iPad Pro come appended with a Z or X. The SoC of the iPad Pro has more elements for heavy-duty processing tasks. Everything is very much the same about single-core speeds, but multi-core may provide a more incredible speed of about 60 percent. It is to see if Apple can achieve the same gains in speed with its processors of M-series.

Regarding the GPU’s performance, the tech giant needs to introduce many more improvements if it is willing to challenge AMD and Nvidia. It will be awe-inspiring to beat the integrated graphics of Intel. Still, it is not easy as discrete GPUs are far beyond and at an entirely different level than anything that Apple has demonstrated until now. This is why the tech giant has still not made any claims comparing the performance of M1 to discrete graphics cards. It may be that the company could provide an option of third party GPU for its Mac Pro and iMac Pro computers. Overall, you can expect the next Silicon chip to be much more impressive and powerful.

Harley Smith is from London (U.K). Before he started writing blogs he went through various occupations such as teaching, programming and travelling. But his favorite job is writing blogs for antivirus technology for livesafeforum.net.

Source :-  Apple Silicon Mac