Apple M4 Chip With On-Device AI, Ray Tracing and Ultra Retina XDR Display Support Launched

Apple on Tuesday unveiled its M4 chip, the company’s most powerful Apple Silicon processor to date. The new chipset is built on the firm’s second-generation 3nm technology and powers the latest iPad Pro (2024) models launched at its ‘Let Loose’ launch event with new ‘Tandem OLED’ screens. It is equipped with up to 10 CPU cores and comes with an upgraded Neural Engine with support for up to 38 trillion operations per second, improving the performance of on-device AI task on the company’s new iPad Pro.

During the launch of the iPad Pro (2024) on Tuesday, the Cupertino company revealed that the new M4 chip comprises 28 billion transistors and has up to four performance cores and six efficiency cores — both equipped with improved machine learning accelerators. It is built on Apple’s second-generation 3nm technology and the company says it offers 1.5 times faster CPU performance compared to the iPad Pro (2022) that is powered by an M2 chip.

Apple’s new M4 chip has up to 4 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores
Photo Credit: Apple

The new M4 chip also brings hardware-accelerated ray tracing to the iPad Pro — the capability was added to the company’s Mac and MacBook models last year with the M3 chip — and Apple says the new GPU offers the same performance as the M2-powered iPad Pro models while consuming half the amount of power.

On-device AI performance has also been improved on the new M4 chip, according to Apple. The upgraded Neural Engine is now capable of 38 trillion operations, which is used to enable features like Live Captions and Visual Look Up. The company also says that the Neural Engine on the M4 chip is optimised to work with new AI-based features on Final Cut Pro and StaffPad.

The M4 is the first Apple Silicon chip to debut on a non-Mac computer, and Apple says it developed the processor to power the new display engine that enables the ‘Tandem OLED’ technology on the iPad Pro (2024). The company’s latest iPad Pro is equipped with an ‘Ultra Retina XDR Display’ that offers improved brightness using two OLED panels. The chip is also expected to power Apple’s upcoming Mac and MacBook models that are expected to arrive over the coming months.