Apple’s M2 processor isn’t going to get drastic performance gains over the M1, claims Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The chip is expected to receive the same amount of CPU cores, but may contain more GPU cores.
The M2 will be ‘marginally’ faster than the M1 at the end of 2020, Gurman writes in a newsletter from which 9to5Mac quotes. He learned that from his sources familiar with Apple’s plans. Gurman expects the processor to still get four powerful and four economical CPU cores, but with a more powerful GPU. The M2 would then get nine or ten GPU cores instead of seven or eight GPU cores.
The M2 would be the processor of a significantly modified MacBook Air, which should appear this year. MacRumors claimed at the end of November last year that the MacBook Air gets some of the features of the MacBook Pro. For example, the Air would be thinner and lighter than the current model and the wedge shape would not return. According to MacRumors, the Air also gets the same keyboard as the Pro, but the laptop does not have HDMI or a memory card reader.
The claim about Gurman’s M2 is part of a list of predictions for Apple’s 2022 announcements, repeating an earlier rumor that iPhone 14 models with a camera hole will appear. He also predicts the arrival of new Mac Pro models with M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, including a small Mac Pro with a chip that gets up to 40 CPU cores and 128 GPU cores. Apple would like to announce during WWDC 2022 that it will complete its transition from Intel chips to its own chips. Apple announced the start of that transition at its 2020 developer conference, saying it would take two years for new batches of all of the company’s computers to ship with proprietary socs.
Gurman further claims that Apple is working on an external monitor that should cost half the price of the Pro Display XDR. The standard version of that 32″ monitor currently costs 5500 euros. Gurman could not report whether the cheaper version will appear this year.
