Apple announces a new M2 update to Apple silicon at WWDC22

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M2 Stats
M2 Stats (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

  • Apple has announced the new M2 chip.
  • The speedy Apple silicon was announced during the WWDC22 opening keynote.

Apple has today announced the next generation of its Apple silicon, with the M2 chip's debut during today's WWDC22 event.

The new second-generation hardware comes built on a 5nm manufacturing process and features 20 billion transistors. Apple says we can expect up to 100GB/s of bandwidth which is 50% more than the current M1 chip, the chip that started the Apple silicon transition.

The chips themselves come with an 8-core CPU — four of which are performance with a larger cache than before. Apple expects 18% better performance vs. power usage results compared to the M1 chips while 10 GPU cores represent a doubling of the previous M1 part. That, in, turn, means 25% improved graphics performance at the same power level as the M1 and 25% improved performance when working at its maximum power output.

Apple M2

Apple M2 (Image credit: Apple)

Video creators will enjoy the ability to handle multiple 4K and 8K streams at once, with a high bandwidth video decoder supporting 8K encoding and decoding.

The first machine to make use of the new M2 chip is the updated MacBook Air, a device that Apple says is its best-selling laptop currently. There's no doubt that it will also make its way to all of the newest best MacBooks on the market.

Developing story, refresh for more.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.