The new M4 Pro and M4 Max chips, alongside the M4, establish the most advanced lineup of chips ever crafted for personal computers. With their introduction, Apple continues to enhance the Mac’s performance, adding greater power efficiency and cutting-edge capabilities across the board. These three chips leverage industry-leading, second-generation 3-nanometer technology, optimizing both speed and energy usage.
Each chip in the M4 family is built with the industry’s fastest CPU cores, offering outstanding single-threaded performance and significantly faster multithreaded capabilities. The GPUs have also been enhanced, featuring an upgraded graphics architecture and a ray-tracing engine twice as fast as the previous generation, making them ideal for high-end graphics tasks and complex AI workloads.
The M4 Pro and M4 Max additionally bring Thunderbolt 5 connectivity to the Mac, supporting greatly increased unified memory bandwidth—up to 75% more than before. These improvements are paired with a Neural Engine that’s up to twice as fast as previous models and enhanced machine learning accelerators within the CPUs. These advancements make the M4 family ideal for intensive professional and AI-driven tasks, offering incredible speed and power for demanding applications.
According to Johny Srouji, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies, the M4 Pro and M4 Max reinforce Apple Silicon’s transformative impact on the Mac, pushing innovation forward with faster CPUs, more powerful GPUs, and the highest-performing Neural Engine Apple has ever built. The M4 family is leading the industry as the most advanced chip lineup available.
M4: Exceptional Performance and Versatile Capabilities
The M4 chip introduces a remarkable level of performance to the Mac, catering to users like entrepreneurs, students, and creative professionals. Equipped with up to a 10-core CPU (four performance cores and six efficiency cores), the M4 is up to 1.8 times faster than the M1, making multitasking smooth and responsive across a variety of applications, from browsing in Safari to complex tasks in Excel. Its 10-core GPU provides up to twice the graphics speed of the M1, making high-demand tasks such as photo editing and AAA gaming smoother than ever.
The M4 supports up to 32 GB of unified memory and has a higher memory bandwidth of 120 GB/s. This chip also includes a more advanced display engine that allows connection to two external displays, in addition to a built-in display. With up to four Thunderbolt 4 ports, the M4 offers faster data transfer speeds and increased flexibility for peripherals.
M4 Pro: A Powerhouse for Professional AI and Computing Needs
The M4 Pro chip builds upon the technologies introduced in the M4, scaling them to meet the needs of developers, engineers, creative professionals, and users with demanding workflows. The M4 Pro includes a 14-core CPU with up to 10 performance cores and four efficiency cores, achieving up to 1.9 times the speed of the M1 Pro CPU and up to 2.1 times faster than recent AI-focused PC chips. With a 20-core GPU, graphics performance on the M4 Pro is twice as fast as the M4, and up to 2.4 times faster than current AI PC chips. This level of processing power significantly reduces time for activities like building and testing applications across simulators in Xcode.
The M4 Pro supports up to 64 GB of fast unified memory with a memory bandwidth of 273 GB/s—a 75% boost over the M3 Pro and double that of competing AI PC chips. This combination of high-speed memory and enhanced Neural Engine capabilities allows Apple’s on-device intelligence models to operate at incredible speeds. With Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, the M4 Pro also delivers up to 120 Gb/s data transfer speeds, more than doubling the throughput of Thunderbolt 4. This chip’s advanced features are designed to meet the needs of professionals working with large file sizes across fields such as AI, video editing, and coding.
M4 Max: The Ultimate Chip for Intensive Pro Workflows
Designed for users who handle some of the most intensive workflows, like data scientists, 3D artists, and composers, the M4 Max is Apple’s most powerful chip yet. The M4 Max sports a 16-core CPU, featuring up to 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores, achieving speeds up to 2.2 times faster than the M1 Max and up to 2.5 times faster than today’s top AI-focused PC chips. Its 40-core GPU is up to 1.9 times faster than the M1 Max’s and up to four times faster than leading AI PC chips, which allows for complex tasks, such as real-time video editing in DaVinci Resolve Studio.
Supporting up to 128 GB of unified memory and with memory bandwidth reaching 546 GB/s, the M4 Max offers four times the bandwidth of today’s top AI PC chips. This enhanced memory performance allows developers to work seamlessly with large-scale language models containing up to 200 billion parameters. The M4 Max also includes an upgraded Media Engine with two video encode engines and two ProRes accelerators, making it the top choice for video professionals. Additionally, like the M4 Pro, the M4 Max offers Thunderbolt 5 with up to 120 Gb/s data transfer, ideal for handling demanding pro-level workloads.
Apple Silicon’s Foundation for Apple Intelligence
The M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max are designed to support Apple Intelligence, a new era of personal intelligence on the Mac. This system combines generative models with robust privacy protections, utilizing Apple’s Neural Engine to enable innovative ways for users to work, communicate, and create. With system-wide Writing Tools, a redesigned Siri that integrates fluidly with typed and spoken commands, and personalized, context-aware suggestions, Apple Intelligence is transforming how users interact with their devices. Scheduled for release in December, this system will expand with features such as Image Playground for creative visuals, Genmoji for custom emoji, and Siri’s integration with ChatGPT for seamless, on-device AI support.
By processing data directly on the device, Apple Intelligence ensures that privacy remains central to user interactions. Private Cloud Compute further supports complex tasks securely, allowing users to access Apple’s larger models without sacrificing personal data protection. For those connecting their ChatGPT account, Apple incorporates additional privacy safeguards to ensure personal data remains secure.
Commitment to Sustainability
The energy-efficient performance of the M4 family contributes to Apple’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2030. The new MacBook Pro lineup, powered by M4 chips, meets Apple’s rigorous energy efficiency standards, providing up to 24 hours of battery life, reducing overall energy consumption. This commitment to sustainability is reflected across desktop devices, including iMac and Mac mini, which benefit from Apple Silicon’s reduced power requirements. Apple has already achieved carbon neutrality across its global corporate operations, and with the M4 family, it continues to make strides toward a greener future.
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