Apple debuts M4 processor in new iPad Pros with 38 TOPS on neural engine

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The new chip is all in on AI.

Apple M4
(Image credit: Apple)

Apple announced its latest processor, the M4, in a video event today. The new chip, which is meant to focus on AI performance, will debut in the new iPad Pro tablets — the first time Apple has introduced an M-series chip in an iPad rather than a Mac.

The M4 is built on a 2nd-generation 3-nanometer process. It features four performance cores, six efficiency cores, and a 10-core GPU that brings ray tracing and hardware-accelerated mesh shading to the iPad for the first time. Apple called out the greater chip industry for just starting to put NPUs in its chips, while Apple has been doing it for years. The M4's new 16-core neural engine supports 38 trillion operations per second.  In total, Apple's latest chip has over 28 billion transistors on board.

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Andrew E. Freedman
Andrew E. Freedman
Senior Editor

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net. You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01

80 Comments Comment from the forums
  • abufrejoval
    And just what good will all that AI do?

    Can it do the dishes?

    Can you have a meaningful conversation with it?

    Judging from what I get from the various Llamas with my RTX 4090, which got plenty more power going and still garbage going out, all those transistors are total waste of sand.
    Reply
  • kealii123
    So TLDR for $1000 the 11 inch ipad will have roughly double the performance as my steamdeck but in a fanless design probably staying under 10 watts sustained load. The screen will be as good as my flagship OLED phone, and their OS isn't full of adware, spyware, bloatware, and other nonsense.

    I hate apple. I hate their OSes. I love using my own software, or at least my own choice of software, like Brave browser, and running desktop software on a tablet (like Fusion 360, IDEs, etc). But man, RIP to Intel and AMD. Apple silicon is crushing, and Windows 11 is now worse than MacOS. Even if Qualcomm comes thru with all their promises, thats still a chip thats 1 generation behind Apple AND is married to Windows and Microsoft. Its infuriating.

    I have AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm Windows devices, and my work machine is an M1 macbook. I've use all of them. Hats off to Apple, for everything but gaming its not even a choice.
    Reply
  • CelicaGT
    M silicon is largely wasted in an iPad. Most of these end up media consumption devices, expensive but trendy POS terminals, or wrapped in an industrial case inventory/inspection terminals. Three gen old A series does all that fine. If they want the iPad to do more and actually be relevant they need to fix the software. Make it more like macOS or allow it to run macOS. I did read that Apple is working towards on device AI models, so perhaps this is heading towards an even worse HomePod/Siri experience but on a tablet? Sounds awful to me.
    Reply
  • The Hardcard
    abufrejoval said:
    And just what good will all that AI do?

    Can it do the dishes?

    Can you have a meaningful conversation with it?

    Judging from what I get from the various Llamas with my RTX 4090, which got plenty more power going and still garbage going out, all those transistors are total waste of sand.
    No AI is going to transform how people use computers in key ways. In five years, most people will insist on AI accelerators. What you have today is AI in its infancy. Llama 3 is like the Commodore PET-Apple I era. Hobbyists feeling their way around.

    Polished AI that will do complex, tedious tasks will arrive inside of 3 years and will transform all aspects of computer and device work. I’m astonished by the number of tech enthusiasts who are not seeing the biggest technological transformation of their lifetime.

    It should be clear that by 2030, there will be no need to learn Excel, AutoCAD, DaVinci Resolve, VS Code, Photoshop, Powerpoint or myriad other apps. People take classes and get certificates to show they can do highly complex, technical work using professional applications. Mature AI apps will allow people who know nothing about today’s applications to get better results.

    We are going to be able to just tell the devices what we want and have the results provided without thinking or even knowing about cells, formulas, filters, grids, macros, formatting, layers, plugins, coding, and the like.
    Reply
  • usertests
    CelicaGT said:
    M silicon is largely wasted in an iPad. Most of these end up media consumption devices, expensive but trendy POS terminals, or wrapped in an industrial case inventory/inspection terminals. Three gen old A series does all that fine.
    It's the Pro model, which is ostensibly for more than just media consumption.
    Reply
  • The Hardcard
    CelicaGT said:
    M silicon is largely wasted in an iPad. Most of these end up media consumption devices, expensive but trendy POS terminals, or wrapped in an industrial case inventory/inspection terminals. Three gen old A series does all that fine. If they want the iPad to do more and actually be relevant they need to fix the software. Make it more like macOS or allow it to run macOS. I did read that Apple is working towards on device AI models, so perhaps this is heading towards an even worse HomePod/Siri experience but on a tablet? Sounds awful to me.
    Silicon waste is not determined by whether there are people who don’t use its full potential. It would be wasted if nobody used it. You could argue that there are people wasting their money by getting more compute than they need just to have a halo device. To be sure, Apple makes extra billions off of those people.

    But millions of iPad M4s will be often be maxed out. Hundreds of thousands will be regularly maxed out. The M4 is not nearly the end of the road for necessary iPad capacity. Many people will have use for the future chips.
    Reply
  • CelicaGT
    usertests said:
    It's the Pro model, which is ostensibly for more than just media consumption.
    And yet, that's what most people will want because Pro simply means the best now. It's more of a status symbol than anything.
    Reply
  • Notton
    Only 38TOPS?
    Are they going to claim Apple TOPS is double the performance of what will end up in Windows PCs?
    Reply
  • JamesJones44
    Given TOPS isn't a great metric and they are touting a 50% performance increase over a 2 gen old CPU with two less cores (e cores, but with no SMT, makes a difference) and a node that is almost half in size of the M2's this is a lot of "see what we did" with out a lot of meat to back it up IMO.

    For all the hype I expected a lot more, this is very much iterative vs the M3 overall.
    Reply
  • CelicaGT
    The Hardcard said:
    Silicon waste is not determined by whether there are people who don’t use its full potential. It would be wasted if nobody used it. You could argue that there are people wasting their money by getting more compute than they need just to have a halo device. To be sure, Apple makes extra billions off of those people.

    But millions of iPad M4s will be often be maxed out. Hundreds of thousands will be regularly maxed out. The M4 is not nearly the end of the road for necessary iPad capacity. Many people will have use for the future chips.
    It's a turn of phrase nothing more, don't read so far into things. Here it indicates that typical home users will purchase something powerful well beyond their use case simply because it's the "best". I'm sure there are dozens of people that will max these out in a "Pro" capacity. Some may play games that push it to it's boundaries, the other several million will purchase something fit for a professional use case, like a full blown Macbook featuring the same processor or its PC equivalent. You know, something with actual IO and a functional keyboard that isn't costing them the equivalent to a second, entry level iPad. My beef with the iPad is that it is OS limited, the hardware is capable of so much more. This is a complaint echoed throughout the Appleverse, it's not just me.
    Reply