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Apple unveiled a new iPad equipped with what it calls an “insanely powerful AI chip,” demonstrating the Silicon Valley giant's increasing focus on artificial intelligence services.
The company launched its M4 chip for its latest iPad Pro devices on Tuesday, just months after introducing the M3 along with new Macs in October.
AI developers' insatiable demand for computing power has led big tech companies like Apple and Nvidia to accelerate the pace of development of more powerful processors capable of processing vast amounts of data.
Chip design has become an essential feature of the world's wealthiest technology companies, with Microsoft, Amazon and Google all announcing new AI-focused processors in the past few months.
Tim Millet, Apple's vice president of platform architecture, called the M4's combination of central processing unit, graphics processor, and dedicated AI capabilities (which the company calls a “neural engine”) a major advance over previous chips. praised.
The combination of these components makes the M4 “an incredibly powerful AI chip,” he said at an Apple event on Tuesday.
As iPhone sales slump, Apple is under pressure from investors to announce new AI capabilities to compete with Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google.
Since OpenAI introduced its groundbreaking ChatGPT chatbot 18 months ago, an explosion of new AI apps has led to so-called large-scale language models, AI systems that can generate human-like text and images. This has sparked a race to secure the powerful processors needed to build them.
Apple has been designing its own Arm-based processors for iPhones since 2010, and made the switch from Intel chips for Mac computers with 2020's M1.
The latest iPad Pro models announced at Tuesday's event have thinner, brighter screens and require more advanced processors. But like previous M-series chips, the M4 will likely be the beginning of widespread upgrades to Apple's custom chips across its product range, paving the way for more advanced AI capabilities.
Silicon Valley company Nvidia, whose chips have become hugely popular with startups and big tech companies, launched a new generation of AI processors last month in a bid to solidify its dominance.
Analysts say Apple's latest chips give customers the opportunity to bring more AI capabilities that run in the cloud to customers' own devices, making apps run faster and providing more privacy.
“The flexibility of Apple's silicon architecture remains one of its biggest technological advantages over its competitors,” said Ben Bajarin, a technology industry analyst at Creative Strategies. He added that the company is “beginning to highlight its capabilities more intentionally.” [chips’] Role in AI”.
Millet said M4 leverages the most advanced manufacturing process technology currently available at scale, the so-called second-generation 3nm node, and is expected to improve power efficiency. This chip also offers more memory bandwidth. This is an important feature for data-intensive AI applications.
He noted that the iPhone maker has “over the years” dedicated part of its processor to an AI feature known as the Neural Engine, which he says is “more powerful than any AI equivalent chip.” He claimed that there was, and dismissed Apple's rivals. Today's PC.”
Apple's PC rival Microsoft is planning a Windows event this month focused on AI and portability, and will feature Qualcomm's new Arm-based processors.
“The new iPad Pro with M4 is a great example of how building best-in-class custom silicon makes breakthrough products possible,” said Johnny, Apple's senior vice president of hardware technology.・Mr. Suluj said.
Apple's event also featured a redesigned Pencil stylus for tablets and a more affordable version of the larger 13-inch iPad model.
