Apple M4 is a series of

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between ...

-based

system on a chip A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or Electronics, electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with computer memory, ...

(SoC) designed by

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

, part of the

Apple silicon Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture family, ARM architecture. They are used in nearly all of the company's devices including Mac ...

series, including a

central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary Processor (computing), processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes Instruction (computing), instructions ...

(CPU), a

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

(GPU), a

neural processing unit A neural processing unit (NPU), also known as AI accelerator or deep learning processor, is a class of specialized hardware accelerator or computer system designed to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning applications, inc ...

(NPU), and a

digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) integrated circuit chips. ...

(DSP). The M4 chip was introduced in May 2024 for the iPad Pro (7th generation), and is the fourth generation of the M series Apple silicon architecture, succeeding the

Apple M3 Apple M3 is a series of ARM architecture family, ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series, as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for its Mac (computer), Mac deskto ...

Design

The M4 series is built upon

TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC or Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is one of the world's most valuable semiconductor companies, the world' ...

's second-generation 3-nanometer process and contains 28 billion transistors. It is Apple's first SoC to reportedly use the

ARMv9 ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for computer processors. Arm Holdings develops the ISAs and licen ...

CPU architecture. The M4 is based on ARMv9.2a. It supports the Scalable Matrix Extension (SME) but not the

Scalable Vector Extension AArch64, also known as ARM64, is a 64-bit version of the ARM architecture family, a widely used set of computer processor designs. It was introduced in 2011 with the ARMv8 architecture and later became part of the ARMv9 series. AArch64 allows p ...

(SVE). Because of the lack of SVE support, the

LLVM LLVM, also called LLVM Core, is a target-independent optimizer and code generator. It can be used to develop a Compiler#Front end, frontend for any programming language and a Compiler#Back end, backend for any instruction set architecture. LLVM i ...

compiler officially flags the M4 as supporting ARMv8.7a.

CPU

The base M4 features a 10-

core Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (laboratory), a highly specialized shared research resource * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber ...

design made up of four performance cores and six efficiency cores (with one performance core disabled on binned models). The M4 Pro features an up to 14-core CPU, with 10 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores. Meanwhile, the M4 Max features an up to 16-core CPU, with 2 more performance cores than the M4 Pro.

GPU

The M4 includes a 10-core GPU, with hardware-accelerated ray tracing, dynamic caching, and mesh shading introduced with the M3. The M4 Pro has an up to 20-core GPU, while the M4 Max contains an up to 40-core GPU. Apple claims that the ray tracing engine of the M4 family of GPUs is twice as fast as the M3.

NPU

The M4 Neural Engine has been significantly improved compared to its predecessor, with the advertised capability to perform up to 38 trillion operations per second, claimed to be more than double the advertised performance of the M3. The M4 NPU performs over 60× faster than the A11 Bionic, and is approximately 3× faster than the original M1.

Memory

The M4 is packaged with LPDDR5X unified memory, supporting 120GB/sec of memory

bandwidth Bandwidth commonly refers to: * Bandwidth (signal processing) or ''analog bandwidth'', ''frequency bandwidth'', or ''radio bandwidth'', a measure of the width of a frequency range * Bandwidth (computing), the rate of data transfer, bit rate or thr ...

. The SoC is offered in 8GB,16GB, 24GB, and 32GB configurations, with the 8GB configuration only being available on the iPad. The M4 Pro is available with up to 64GB unified memory (Mac Mini) with a theoretical maximum bandwidth of 273GB/sec. The M4 Max is capable of addressing up to 128GB unified memory, with over half a terabyte per second (546GB/sec) of memory bandwidth.

Performance

Apple claims up to 50% more CPU performance and 4× more GPU performance on the M4 compared to the M2. The M4 competes for the highest-scoring consumer SoC for single-core benchmarks according to various sources such as the

Geekbench Geekbench is a proprietary and freemium cross-platform utility for benchmarking the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) of computers, laptops, tablets, and phones. History Geekbench began as a benchmark for Mac OS X ...

benchmarking Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are Project management triangle, quality, time and cost. Benchmarking is ...

suite and Passmark Software's CPU benchmarks. In doing so, M4's single-core performance competes with

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...

Ryzen Ryzen ( ) is a brand of multi-core x86-64 microprocessors, designed and marketed by AMD for desktop, mobile, server, and embedded platforms, based on the Zen microarchitecture. It consists of central processing units (CPUs) marketed for mai ...

7 9700X and

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

Core Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (laboratory), a highly specialized shared research resource * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber ...

i9-14900K. Meanwhile, in multithreaded performance, the M4 performs similarly to the M3 Pro and the product line as a whole competes with similar consumer level processors from Intel and AMD, such as the Intel Core Ultra and AMD Ryzen series.

Additional features

The M4 is the first iPad SoC to support hardware-accelerated AV1 decoding, as well as hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing introduced to MacBooks in the M3. A new

display controller A video display controller (VDC), also called a display engine or display interface, is an integrated circuit which is the main component in a video-signal generator, a device responsible for the production of a TV video signal in a computing ...

has also been implemented to support the iPad Pro (7th generation)'s Tandem

OLED An organic light-emitting diode (OLED), also known as organic electroluminescent (organic EL) diode, is a type of light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is an organic compound film that emits light in respon ...

display.

Products that use the Apple M4 series

M4

* iPad Pro (7th generation) * iMac (2024) * Mac Mini (2024) * MacBook Pro (14-inch, 2024) * MacBook Air (2025)

M4 Pro

* Mac Mini (2024) * MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch, 2024)

M4 Max

* MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch, 2024) * Mac Studio (2025)

Variants

*The table below shows the SOCs in the Apple M4 product family and their applications.

Notes

References

{{Application ARM-based chips Apple silicon Computer-related introductions in 2024