Yesterday, Apple officially announced their new M2 chipset. For those who do not understand the processor, it may seem distasteful and unimportant. But in fact, it is further proof that some manufacturers will definitely dominate the world of technological change. So far there are a few such companies, but they exist, and they obviously have better opportunities to produce products that will stand head and shoulders above their competitors. To understand, let’s consider why own chips are better than buying.
New Apple M2 processor
The use of the M2 chip marks the debut of the second generation Apple Silicon processor. As the name implies, the Apple M2 is the successor to the M1 chipset, announced several years ago, and promises significant performance improvements.
The new Apple M2 chip is made using Apple’s exclusive Silicon ARM and a 5-nm process with 20 billion transistors, which the company claims is 25 percent larger than the original M1.
The company promises 18% faster processors and 35% faster graphics processors than the M1. Apple further claims that the performance is about 1.9 times higher than the “last 10-core chip for laptops”, but does not name the direct competitors.
How much more powerful is the M2 than Intel
Compared to competing models, some generations of Intel processors are lost to Apple’s newcomers, and sometimes dozens of times. So the company compares its new laptop with the solutions offered a few years ago before the M1 was released.
By creating its own processor, the company realized what it needed. As a result, even if it uses other people’s plant production capacity, it wants to reduce production costs. Every manufacturer spends money on design, layout, patents and other things. They all have a strong impact on manufacturing, not just the process of making a chip or their connection.
Why you need your own processor
But lowering the price and gaining competitive advantage by maintaining the same level of profit, though important, is not a determining factor in the superiority of its own processor over the purchased ones. The bottom line is that the company can create what it needs. For example, the new chipset uses Apple’s new core of performance and efficiency.
These are four high-performance M2 cores, 4 power-efficient cores and up to 10 video processor cores (depending on version). It has increased cache and memory bandwidth and RAM has been built into a single chipset. At the same time, thanks to the technical ability to combine RAM and SSD at 7000 GB / s, it gives excellent results at low material costs.
But you can do all this with the knowledge of what you want to get as a result, and the general solutions are bad. Here’s the second advantage of their own processors – their optimization for specific needs. That is, they are both much cheaper and better. You do not have to choose between the two.
At one point, Huawei also built its own processor, but its business was rapidly downgraded in 2019 due to the ban. To survive, he had to switch to Qualcomm chipsets. Now we will not go into the political basis of this process, but it is better to mention another processor that companies are developing for themselves. No, it’s not Samsung Exynos. It’s interesting too, but not like Google Tensor 2. Let it help Samsung make it, and the line has so far only been released for smartphones, but it’s worth noting at the heart of our conversation.
Google Tensor Processor 2
Google’s next-generation flagship processor – the Google Tensor 2 – has not yet been released, but it will still maintain Samsung’s manufacturing process. It will use the 4-nm Samsung LPE process currently used by Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and Exynos 2200. However, Qualcomm no longer supports this process, as it has now switched to the 4-nm TSMC process for the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1. SoC.
Also, the Google Tensor 2 processor will use the ARMv9 instruction set. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the world’s first chip with an ARMv9 instruction set. ARM officials say this is the most important innovation of the last 10 years. The company further claims that this technology is the basis of the future 300 billion ARM chips.
Compared to the previous generation ARMv8, the ARMv9 instruction set will no longer be limited to the mobile / embedded market. It will also expand into new markets such as PCs, HPCs, high-performance computing and deep learning to meet the global demand for more robust security systems and artificial intelligence.
This is where you need to prove that your own chipsets are good. In the first generation of Tensor, the company was able to make great strides in the functioning of artificial intelligence. That’s what he needs. Although gaming models require thick computing power, certain tasks need to be optimized.
Yes, Google Pixel 6 has some features that other manufacturers can’t afford. In particular, the company has been able to further improve its already excellent photo processing algorithms. At the same time, I set it up so that it now works on devices bypassing cloud processing.
Sooner or later, all major manufacturers will switch to their own processors. Until then, those who have already done so will have a competitive advantage. Their devices will simply be more flexible, which will take them to another league. They will not be good in all cases, but they will be more diverse. Not everyone needs a strong pickup. Some prefer a compact city car, some prefer a sports car and some prefer a tractor. Well, you know what I’m talking about. These capabilities provide new processors.