Apple unveils powerful new AI-focused M4 chip
Apple unveiled its latest iPad Pro models on Tuesday powered by new Apple Silicon, the M4 SoC, with a new Neural Engine for artificial intelligence and machine learning as it rushes to catch up with its Big Tech rivals in the AI race.
M4 has an extremely fast Neural Engine — an IP block in the chip dedicated to the acceleration of AI workloads. This is Apple’s most powerful Neural Engine ever, capable of an astounding 38 trillion operations per second — an astouding 60x faster than the first Neural Engine in Apple’s A11 Bionic (launched September 12, 2017). Together with next-generation ML accelerators in the CPU, the high-performance GPU, and higher-bandwidth unified memory, the Neural Engine makes M4 an extremely powerful chip for AI.
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Debuting its latest chip in a tablet rather than its Mac laptops is unusual for Apple, and suggests it is eager to give app makers a head start creating AI-related software ahead of its annual software developer conference next month, analysts said.
Apple said the iPad Pro – its highest-priced model – will have upgraded displays and start at $1,000 for an 11-inch (27.9-cm) model and $1,300 for a 13-inch (33-cm) model.
It will come with an M4 chip with a larger “neural engine,” part of the chip specifically designed for the kind of computing required by AI features such as generating text or images.
“With this level of performance, the neural engine and M4 is more powerful than any neural processing unit in any AI PC today,” Tim Millet, vice president of platform architecture at Apple, said during the presentation.
Precisely what AI features the new M4 chips could power might not become clear until June 10 at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where it often shows new capabilities for Siri its voice assistant, as well as the rest of its operating systems.
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The more Apple says “AI,” regardless of the actual substance – yes, in this case, right now, “image is everything” – the better it will be for product sales and for Apple shareholders.
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Source link: https://macdailynews.com/2024/05/07/apple-unveils-powerful-new-ai-focused-m4-chip/
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