From M1 to M4, What Are the Mysteries of Apple's Chip Iteration and Upgrade? Is There a Difference in the Performance of M4 between iPad and Mac Air?

 

There are several differences among Apple's M1, M3, and M4 processors.

 

In terms of the manufacturing process, the M1 uses a 5nm process. The M3 is based on TSMC's 3nm process, which enables higher performance at the same power consumption or reduces power consumption while maintaining the same performance. The M4 is based on TSMC's second-generation 3nm process, with a further increase in transistor density.

 

Regarding the core configuration, the M1 has an 8-core CPU (4 performance cores + 4 energy-efficient cores) and a 7/8-core GPU. The basic version of the M3 features an 8-core CPU (4P + 4E) combined with a 10-core GPU. The M4 introduces a 10-core CPU (4P + 6E) version, and its GPU supports hardware ray tracing acceleration.

 

In terms of performance, the multi-core performance of the M1 surpasses that of the Intel i7 of the same period. The single-core performance of the M3 is 33% higher than that of the M1, and the ray tracing technology is made available, increasing the rendering efficiency of game graphics by 40%. The neural engine of the M4 has a computing power of 3.8 trillion operations per second, and the processing speed of AI tasks is twice as fast as that of the M3. According to Geekbench scores, the multi-core performance of the M4 is 25% higher than that of the M3, and the GPU score exceeds 54,000.

 

In terms of memory, the M1 supports a maximum of 16GB of memory. Both the M3 and M4 support a maximum of 24GB of unified memory, and the M4 is also equipped with faster memory.

 

The performance of the M4 on the iPad mobile platform is basically the same as that of the M4 in the Apple Mac Air computer. In the Geekbench 6 Metal benchmark test, the 13-inch M4 iPad Pro scored 54,023 points, and the M4 MacBook Air (model "Mac16,12") equipped with a ten-core M4 chip scored 54,806 points in the same test. The scores of the two are quite close. This is because they adopt the same chip architecture and manufacturing process, and the main differences may come from external factors such as the impact of the cooling design on the performance release.