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Apple M4 is a series of ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series, including a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU), a neural processing unit (NPU), and a digital signal processor (DSP). The M4 chip was introduced in May 2024 for the iPad Pro (7th generation), and is the fourth generation of the M series Apple silicon architecture, succeeding the Apple M3.[3][4][5] It was followed by the professional-focused M4 Pro and M4 Max in October 2024.[6]
| General information | |
|---|---|
| Launched |
|
| Designed by | Apple |
| Common manufacturer | |
| Architecture and classification | |
| Application |
|
| Technology node | 3 nm (N3E) |
| Instruction set | ARMv9.2-A[1] |
| Physical specifications | |
| Transistors |
|
| Cores |
|
| Memory (RAM) | |
| GPUs |
|
| Co-processor | NPU: 38 TOPS |
| Products, models, variants | |
| Variant |
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| History | |
| Predecessor | Apple M3 |
The M4 series is built upon TSMC's second-generation 3-nanometer process and contains 28 billion transistors.[7]
The M4 features a 10-core design made up of four performance cores and six efficiency cores (with one performance core disabled on binned models). The SoC also includes a 10-core GPU (with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, dynamic caching, and mesh shading introduced with the M3), as well as a 16-core NPU.[8]
The M4 Neural Engine has been significantly improved compared to its predecessor, with the advertised capability to perform up to 38 trillion operations per second, claimed to be more than double the advertised performance of the M3. The M4 NPU performs over 60x faster than the A11 Bionic, and is approximately 3x faster than the original M1.[9]
The M4 is packaged with LPDDR5X unified memory, supporting 120GB/sec of memory bandwidth. The SoC is currently offered in 8GB, 16GB, 24GB, and 32GB configurations. It is also Apple's first SoC to use the ARMv9 CPU architecture (specifically ARMv9.2-A).[10][3]
M4 Pro features an up to 14-core CPU with 10 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores, along with up to a 20-core GPU that is twice as powerful as M4. With M4 Pro, the new MacBook Pro offers a 75% increase in memory bandwidth over the prior generation. The new MacBook Pro with M4 Pro is also up to 3x faster than models with M1 Pro.
Apple M4 Max chip comes with up to 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU, and 16‑core Neural Engine, paired with 48GB up to 128GB unified memory and over half a terabyte per second of unified memory bandwidth. The new Neural Engine is over 3x faster than M1 Max. With M4 Max, MacBook Pro delivers up to 3.5x the performance of M1 Max.
Apple claims up to 50% more CPU performance and 4x more GPU performance on the M4 compared to the M2. The M4 competes for the highest-scoring consumer SoC for single-core benchmarks according to various sources such as the Geekbench benchmarking suite[11] and Passmark Software's CPU benchmarks.[12] Compared to other modern CPUs, the M4 does not outperform the M3 Pro in multi-core performance [13] but it does in single-core performance [14][15] and competes with AMD's Ryzen 7 9700X[16][17] and Intel's Core i9-14900K.[18][19][20][21] In multithreaded performance, the M4 performs similarly to the 12-core M3 Pro.[22]
The M4 is the first iPad SoC to support hardware-accelerated AV1 decoding, as well as hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing introduced to MacBooks in the M3. A new display controller has also been implemented to support the iPad Pro (7th generation)'s Tandem OLED display.[8][23]
M4
M4 Pro
M4 Max
- The table below shows comparable SoCs
| Variant | CPU | GPU | NPU | Memory | Transistor count |
TDP (W) |
Used in | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| P-[lower-alpha 1] cores |
E-[lower-alpha 2] cores |
Cores[lower-alpha 3] | EU | ALU | Cores | Performance | RAM (MT/s) | Control- lers[lower-alpha 4] |
Bandwidth GB/s | ||||
| A18 Pro | 2 | 4 | 6 | 96 | 768 | 16 | 35 TOPS | LPDDR5X 7500 | 4 | 60 | 8 | iPhone 16 Pro | |
| M3 | 4 | 8 | 128 | 1024 | 18 TOPS | LPDDR5 6400 | 8 | 102.4 | 25 billion | 20 | |||
| M4 | 3 | 6 | 10 | 160 | 1280 | 38 TOPS | LPDDR5X 7500 | 120 | 28 billion | 22 | iPad Pro | ||
| 4 | iMac (4-port), Mac Mini, MacBook Pro 14" | ||||||||||||
| 4 | 4 | 8 | 128 | 1024 | iMac (2-port) | ||||||||
| M4 Pro | 8 | 4 | 16 | 256 | 2048 | 38 TOPS | LPDDR5X 8533 | 16 | 273 | Mac Mini, MacBook Pro | |||
| 10 | 20 | 320 | 2560 | ||||||||||
| M4 Max | 10 | 4 | 32 | 512 | 4096 | 38 TOPS | 24 | 410 | MacBook Pro | ||||
| 12 | 40 | 640 | 5120 | 32 | 546 | ||||||||
- Each GPU core has 16 execution units (EUs) and 128 arithmetic logic units (ALUs)
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