Cupertino, California - Apple today announced the M4 Pro and M4 Max, two new chips that will join the M4 chip in driving dramatically improved performance and advanced features for Mac. All three chips are built on the industry-leading second-generation 3nm process technology, delivering improved performance and efficiency. The CPUs in the M4 family feature high-speed CPU cores that deliver industry-leading single-threaded performance and dramatically improved multi-threaded performance. The GPUs build on the groundbreaking GPU architecture of the previous generation with faster cores and 2x faster ray tracing performance. The M4 Pro and M4 Max chips bring Thunderbolt 5 support to the Mac for the first time, with up to 75 percent faster-unified memory bandwidth. The M4 family delivers exceptional performance for pro and AI tasks, thanks to a Neural Engine that’s up to 2x faster than the previous generation and improved machine learning (ML) accelerators in the CPU. These chips are designed for Apple Intelligence, a personal intelligence system that transforms the way users work, communicate and express themselves while protecting their privacy. “Apple silicon has taken the Mac to new heights, and the M4 Pro and M4 Max continue that rapid pace of innovation,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. “With the world’s best-performing CPU cores, a massive GPU boost and our fastest Neural Engine ever, the M4 family continues the industry leadership in energy efficiency and functionality.”
M4 chip: Outstanding performance, new features
The Mac is equipped with the M4 chip for the first time, bringing outstanding performance to users such as entrepreneurs, students, creators, etc. The M4 chip is equipped with up to 10-core CPUs, including 4 performance cores and up to 6 energy-efficient cores. The CPU performance is up to 1.8 times higher than the M1, which greatly increases the speed of multitasking with apps such as Safari browser and Excel. The 10-core GPU provides excellent graphics processing performance, up to 2 times higher than the M1 chip, which can edit photos and run games very quickly and smoothly. The 16-core neural network engine is faster and is designed for Apple intelligence and other AI tasks.
The M4 chip supports up to 32GB of unified memory, and the memory bandwidth is also increased to 120Gb/s. The display engine of the M4 series chips has also been enhanced to support two external displays, which can be used simultaneously with the built-in display. The M4 chip now supports up to 4 Thunderbolt 4 ports for high-speed data transmission and more flexible connection of peripherals.
M4 Pro: Powerful, surpassing AI PC chips
The M4 Pro chip further enhances the advanced technologies first introduced by the M4, helping users such as researchers, developers, engineers, and professional creatives handle more intensive workflows. The M4 Pro chip is equipped with up to 14-core CPUs, including up to 10 performance cores and 4 energy-efficient cores. The CPU performance is up to 1.9 times higher than the M1 Pro and up to 2.1 times faster than the latest AI PC chips. The graphics processor is equipped with up to 20 cores, which is twice that of the M4 chip, bringing powerful graphics processing performance, up to 2.4 times faster than the latest AI PC chips. This significant performance improvement makes it faster than ever to build and test apps using multiple simulators in Xcode. Thanks to the enhanced hardware-accelerated ray tracing engine of the M4 series chip graphics processor, game graphics are more realistic and charming, and professional 3D rendering applications can also generate more beautiful images in less time.
The M4 Pro chip supports up to 64GB of high-speed unified memory and up to 273GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is up to 75% higher than the M3 Pro and twice as fast as other AI PC chips. Coupled with the faster neural network engine of the M4 series chips, Apple's intelligent models on devices run at lightning speed. The M4 Pro chip also enables Mac to support Thunderbolt 5 for the first time, achieving data transfer speeds of up to 120Gb/s, with a data throughput of more than twice that of Thunderbolt 4. The M4 Pro chip provides excellent performance and the outstanding energy efficiency that Apple chips have always achieved, benefiting professionals who need to process larger files in fields such as AI, video, and programming.
M4 Max: Extreme Performance, Extreme Performance
The M4 Max chip is ideal for professionals such as data scientists, 3D artists, composers, and others who often face extremely demanding tasks. The chip is equipped with up to 16 CPU cores, including up to 12 performance cores and 4 energy-efficient cores. Its performance is up to 2.2 times faster than the CPU of the M1 Max chip and up to 2.5 times faster than the latest AI PC chips. The GPU has up to 40 cores, which is up to 1.9 times faster than the M1 Max chip and up to 4 times faster than the latest AI PC chips. Thanks to this, heavy tasks such as denoising RAW video footage in DaVinci Resolve Studio can now run in real time.
The M4 Max chip supports up to 128GB of high-speed unified memory and up to 546GB/s memory bandwidth, which is 4 times the memory bandwidth of the latest AI PC chips, allowing developers to easily interact with large language models with nearly 200 billion parameters. The M4 Max chip’s enhanced media processing engine includes two video encoding engines and two ProRes accelerators, making it the perfect choice for professional video creators. Like the M4 Pro chip, the M4 Max chip supports Thunderbolt 5, with data transfer speeds of up to 120Gb/s. The M4 Max can handle the most demanding professional tasks at high speeds, while also having the outstanding power efficiency of Apple silicon, which can bring excellent battery life to notebook computers.
Apple chips power Apple smartphones
M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max are designed for Apple smartphones. Apple Intelligence, the personal intelligence system, is now available on personal computers, bringing Mac into a new era. Apple Intelligence combines powerful generative models with industry-leading privacy features, leveraging the power of Apple silicon and the Neural Engine to unlock new ways for users to work, communicate, and express themselves on Mac. Now available in US English for macOS Sequoia 15.1.
More environmentally friendly
The energy efficiency of the M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max chips ensures that the new MacBook Pro lineup meets Apple’s high standards for energy efficiency, with up to 24 hours of battery life. This means less time to charge and less energy consumed over the product’s lifecycle. For desktop systems like the iMac and Mac mini, the energy efficiency of Apple chips also means less overall energy consumption. Today, Apple has achieved carbon neutrality across its global corporate operations and plans to make its entire carbon footprint completely carbon neutral by 2030 to achieve its ambitious Apple 2030 goal.