Apple M2 vs Apple M1 Pro 8-Core
Apple M2
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The Apple M2 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2022 MacBook Air and, MacBook Pro 13. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 16 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with up to 2,4 GHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with up to 3,5 GHz and therefore higher than the M1 cores. The architecture should be similar to the A15 (iPhone 13) with Avalanche and Blizzard cores.
The chip features a unified memory architecture for the CPU and GPU cores and supports up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 for a bandwidth of up to 100GB/s.
According to Apple, the M2 offers a 18% higher CPU performance at the same power consumption level compared to the Apple M1. In our tests, the MacBook Pro 13 with active cooling was able to reach the 18% in Geekbench Multi. In other benchmarks we measured 12 to 15% gains compared to the M1. Therefore, the performance is now near the M1 Pro with 8 cores. The passively cooled MacBook Air may however suffer from throttling in longer load scenarios.
The integrated graphics card in the M2 offers 8 or 10 cores and a peak performance of 3.6 TFLOPs.
Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 16 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.
The Apple M2 includes 20 billion transistors (up from the 16 billion of the M1) and is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC (most likely N5P). The power consumption is rated at 20W what we also measured under CPU load.
Apple M1 Pro 8-Core
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The Apple M1 Pro 8-Core is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2021 MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch models. It offers 8 cores from the 10 available in the chip divided in six performance cores (P-cores with 600 - 3220 MHz) and four power-efficiency cores (E-cores with 600 - 2064 MHz). The cores are similar to the cores in the Apple M1.
The big cores (codename Firestorm) offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 24 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB in the M1). The four efficiency cores (codename Icestorm) are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. Finally, the SoC includes 16 MB System Level Cache shared by the GPU. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with 600 - 2064 MHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with 600 - 3228 MHz.
The unified memory (16 or 32 GB LPDDR5-6400) next to the chip is connected by a 256 bit memory controller and can be used by the GPU and CPU.
The integrated graphics card in the M1 Pro offers 14 cores (of the 16 cores in the chip).
Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine, a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders (including ProRes).
The M1 Pro is manufactured in 5 nm at TSMC and integrates 33.7 billion transistors. The peak power consumption of the chip was advertised around 30W for CPU intensive tasks.
| Model | Apple M2 | Apple M1 Pro 8-Core | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Series | Apple M2 | Apple M1 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Series: M1 |
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| Clock | 2424 - 3480 MHz | 2060 - 3220 MHz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| L1 Cache | 2 MB | 2.3 MB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| L2 Cache | 20 MB | 28 MB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| L3 Cache | 8 MB | 16 MB | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Cores / Threads | 8 / 8 | 8 / 8 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| TDP | 20 Watt | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Transistors | 20000 Million | 33700 Million | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Technology | 5 nm | 5 nm | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Features | ARMv8 Instruction Set | ARMv8 Instruction Set | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| iGPU | Apple M2 10-Core GPU ( - 1398 MHz) | Apple M1 Pro 14-Core GPU ( - 1296 MHz) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Architecture | ARM | ARM | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Announced | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Manufacturer | www.apple.com |
Benchmarks
Average Benchmarks Apple M2 → 100% n=10
Average Benchmarks Apple M1 Pro 8-Core → 100% n=10
- Average benchmark values for this graphics card* Smaller numbers mean a higher performance
1 This benchmark is not used for the average calculation
