More than two years since Apple abandoned longtime partner Intel to design its own chips, the iPhone maker believes its efforts have paid off.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Apple’s Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Bob Borchers said, when looking at the increase between the M1 Pro and M2 Pro/M2 Max, CPU performance has improved by 20%, while CPU performance has improved by 20%. GPU up to 30%. It’s not unusual for improvements in processors when just a few years ago people would have been happy with 5 – 6% growth.
The M2 Pro and M2 Max are more powerful versions of the M2 chip that Apple first introduced last June. The company says that the M2 Max’s 12-core CPU and 38-core GPU make it the most powerful and efficient chip for professional laptops. The company claims the MacBook Pro with the M2 Pro chip is 40% faster than the MacBook with the M1 Pro chip and 80% faster than the MacBook with the older Intel Core i9 chip.
But speed isn’t the only improvement on this chip platform. Apple’s VP of Platform Architecture, Tim Millet, told Yahoo Finance that building its own chip also allows Apple to avoid the bottleneck problems of relying on a third-party company. “If you’re a commercial chip supplier and someone like Apple comes in and asks for a large number of transistors to be added to the chip they order to service a new product, this partner won’t respond immediately, but needs to solve the problem. deciding what profit they get, because they have to sell that chip to about 10 more customers – companies don’t necessarily care what Apple cares about when building their own chips, we don’t have to worry about those issues, and that’s what gives us a unique advantage,” said Tim Millet.
However, Apple has not always been interested in turning away from Intel. In fact, a few years ago the company was content with its relationship with the chip giant. Millet thinks that five years ago, the company might not have been ready at a time when its relationship with Intel was still strong. Apple didn’t want to interrupt anything at the time, but Intel’s slow progress in improving chip performance and its desire to build the Mac line of Macs to its own standards meant that Apple had to put chip production into an important position. However, that is not what Intel is worried about. According to Millet, what Intel is only thinking about is maintaining a competitive edge with slightly better improvements, which, for Apple, is not where it needs to be. At Apple, the company needed to make big strides, and that was evident in the Mac M1 generation compared to the Intel Mac.
Still, like the rest of the computer industry, Apple is facing a slowing PC market. Apple is expected to report falling Mac sales in its fourth-quarter 2022 earnings release on February 2. However, with two new lines of chips that make the MacBook Pro and Mac mini faster, the company may have the power it needs to quickly turn this decline around.
Still, like the rest of the computer industry, Apple is facing a slowing PC market. Apple is expected to report falling Mac sales in its fourth-quarter 2022 earnings release on February 2. However, with two new lines of chips that make the MacBook Pro and Mac mini faster, the company may have the power it needs to quickly turn this decline around.