The M2 chip, Apple‘s second-generation silicon chip for the Mac, with improved efficiency and performance, as well as support for up to 24GB of fast unified memory.

The M2 chip is made with second-generation 5nm technology and has 20 billion transistors, which is 25% more than the M1 chip. In comparison to the M1 chip, the M2 has an 18% faster CPU, a 35% more powerful GPU, and a 40% faster Neural Engine.

The M2 has four performance and four efficiency cores and can support up to 24GB of LPDDR5 unified memory. The processor can handle 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, which is a 50% increase over the M1 chip.

Apple claims that the M2 is much faster than the competition at lower power use levels. The M2 chip features up to a 10-core GPU and two more cores than the M1 chip, delivering 18% more performance at the same wattage. The M2 achieves 87 percent of the peak performance of a 12-core PC laptop CPU while consuming only a quarter of the power.

M2 is built using enhanced, second-generation 5-nanometer technology and consists of 20 billion transistors — 25 percent more than M1 (Source: Apple Inc.)

M2 delivers 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth — 50 percent more than M1 — and can be configured with up to 24GB of fast unified memory (Source: Apple Inc.)

The CPU of M2 features faster performance cores and enhanced efficiency cores that together deliver 18 percent greater multithreaded performance than M1 (Source: Apple Inc.)

Compared with the latest 10-core PC laptop chip, the CPU in M2 delivers nearly twice the performance at the same power level (Source: Apple Inc.)

Compared to the latest 12-core PC laptop chip — which needs dramatically more power to deliver an increase in performance — M2 delivers nearly 90 percent of the peak performance of the 12-core chip while using just one-fourth the power (Source: Apple Inc.)

Apple’s next-generation 10-core GPU in M2 delivers up to 35 percent higher graphics performance than M1 at its maximum power (Source: Apple Inc.)

M2 delivers 2.3x faster performance than the integrated graphics of the latest 10-core PC laptop chip at the same power level (Source: Apple Inc.)

M2 matches the peak performance of the 10-core PC laptop chip while using a fifth of the power (Source: Apple Inc.)

M2 also includes a new image signal processor (ISP) that delivers better image noise reduction, as well as an improved media engine with a higher-bandwidth video decoder that supports 8K H.264 and HEVC video, a ProRes video engine to playback multiple streams of 4K and 8K video, Apple’s latest Secure Enclave for enhanced security, and a new image signal processor (ISP) that supports 8K H.264 and HEVC video.

The M2 chip is included in the latest MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro models.