Apple Announces the M2 Processor

Apple announced the M2 processor at WWDC in June 2022 as the second generation of its Mac-oriented Apple silicon. M2 kept the same broad architecture as M1 but increased CPU and GPU performance, memory bandwidth, and maximum unified memory capacity.

The chip used four performance and four efficiency CPU cores plus up to ten GPU cores. Its unified-memory design let CPU, GPU, and other accelerators access one memory pool, avoiding some copies that discrete graphics systems require.

M2 was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, which was important in its own way. After the dramatic Intel-to-ARM transition, Apple was now proving it could sustain a regular processor roadmap rather than treating M1 as a one-time architectural leap.