back to article Apple unveils M4 chip with neural engine capable of 38 TOPS, and some other kit

Apple held its anticipated iPad event today, and the most attention-grabbing news wasn't the new device models or the refreshed iPad Air lineup - it was the unveiling of Apple's homegrown M4 chip with a surprisingly powerful neural processing unit (NPU).  The Arm-compatible M4 – coming just months after Cupertino released the …

  1. Korev Silver badge
    Joke

    M4? Old news, we've had that in Britain for decades...

    1. Diamandi Lucas

      It's like that old joke (which works better when spoken than written): How do you get 2 whales in a Mini?

      You take the M4...

      1. HelpfulJohn

        How do you get four elephants into a Mini?

        First, take out the whales.

  2. The H-J Man

    Yawn

    Or to put it another way. Computer company launch updates to devices which will no doubt have the sheep in the apple shops placing their orders.

    Years ago, the ceo 10 mins after a apple event be ordering a new ipad because the latest features would be ideal for his role blah blah etc etc. Cutting a long story short he used it for email and nothing else but you know shinny shinny looks good

    1. FIA Silver badge

      Re: Yawn

      he used it for email and nothing else but you know shinny shinny looks good

      It's called a Veblen good.

    2. werdsmith Silver badge

      Re: Yawn

      My shins have had a good kicking from decades of playing football and they don't look so good these days. Both scarred.

  3. beast666 Silver badge

    Can you disable the NPU?

    1. FIA Silver badge

      Why would you want to? It's just a processor for doing low precision FPU.

      1. HelpfulJohn

        Can it do distributed computing such as BOINC [ https://boinc.berkeley.edu/ ] and GIMPS [ https://www.mersenne.org/ ]?

        I like those and have been contributing a little dribble of CPU for decades.

    2. UnknownUnknown

      “ While there was plenty of mention of the AI capabilities of the new M4 processor and some of its media editing capabilities, there was no real discussion of Apple's AI plans despite plenty of rumors swirling to that end. ”

      Making Siri less dumb as shit would get my vote.

      Or it could augment Siri with a M4 NPU powered and layered over virtual hearing aid so Airi can understand more SPOKEN words.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Apple pencil with haptic feedback

    Can really chip away at the earwax, while the gyroscope helps make sure you are twiddling it right the way around. Do not think too hard about the squeeze sensor.

    (Anon 'cos I'm ashamed that was the first image that came to mind)

  5. Androgynous Cow Herd

    HMMMM....

    Anyone ever get MPI running on IOS??

    Clustering a bunch of these into the worlds first touchscreen capable HPCC would be an awesomely stupid project, and I want in!!

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: HMMMM....

      That reminds me of people making clusters out of playstations because the chip in them was so fast

    2. GioCiampa

      Re: HMMMM....

      Slashdot called...

      ...it wants its Beowulf cluster back!

  6. Mayday
    Gimp

    Thinnest

    Apparently it's the thinnest Apple device yet. I like Apple stuff (you may or may not, thats up to you), but using an iPad flat on a table is going to be tricky with a thin chassis a big-arse camera bump in one corner. All to be negated by some $$ case making the thickness uniform so you can use the thing this way.

    Edit: The polishing cloth is thinner. Fortuitously it doesn't need a notch or camera bump.

    1. 43300 Silver badge

      Re: Thinnest

      Thin and 13" doesn't sound like a good combination in terms of strength!

      Who actually wants a 13" tablet anyway? One that size is unwieldy - beyond a screen size of about 11" a laptop is generally a better option.

      1. John Robson Silver badge

        Re: Thinnest

        "One that size is unwieldy - beyond a screen size of about 11" a laptop is generally a better option."

        Meh, I can see application for tablets of all sizes. It's pretty trivial nowadays to have a decent keyboard attached, the smaller end of tablets are being eroded by phones... I wonder if we'll get a compact "communications hub" which has a small screen (1" maybe) and just acts as a multi network router for all your other devices - only works with headsets etc...

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Thinnest

        I saw a violinist on the tube with one reading her score music. For that it is perfect. I remember the days of carrying around huge anthologies of scores in huge books. This is much better. Lots of solictors use them too in court with the keyboard

        Of course, if the put MacOS on it, it would be a huge seller and I wd by one.

  7. GraXXoR Bronze badge

    Said it before and I’ll say it again. Until they get rid of CrippleOS and put a proper OS in their iPads, I.e. MacOS, Linux or … lol. Windows for ARM, these high powered chips will only be actually necessary for a very small subset of people.

    I just don’t understand why they insist on such a cut down, limited OS on so-called Pro machines at least.

    1. 43300 Silver badge

      I see you've got some downvotes (presumably from the Apple faithful?!)

      I do agree with your point - given the price and hardware capabiities of these things, they should have MacOS (this is Apple, so it's not going to be anyone else's OS).

      1. FIA Silver badge

        I still think there's capacity for an 'macOS app', in the same vein as Windows Sandbox. The chip supports the necessary virtualisation that would make it possible. I would love to be able to develop on my iPad (as the mini I use for the same purpose is basically the same machine in a different chassis).

        1. TheFifth

          I also have an M2 Mac Mini that I use for development. I'd love to be able to use an iPad for work whilst away from home. I take the iPad with me wherever I go anyway for media consumption, so it's a pain also having to lug around a laptop just in case I need to do any client support. I actually bought a Surface Go (which is running Linux) simply to lower the amount of crap I cart around when going abroad. I leave the iPad and laptop at home and take the Surface with me. It's just about passable as a media consumption device (using Gnome for a better touch UI) and it's also a real computer if and when I need it. Battery life sucks though.

          I watched the announcement yesterday with interest, but little hope of there being anything worth buying. If they lifted some of the iPadOS restrictions so I could run MySQL and Apache locally, I'd seriously consider one of the Pros. As it is, I think I'll just pick up the base model to replace my seven year old iPad (again, base model). It's getting very tired now and stutters and freezes every now and then, so it's due replacing. Thanks for lowering the price Apple, glad I held off on buying! The idea of a macOS app is interesting. The hardware is more than capable.

          As it stands, Apple have lost a big chunk of cash they could have had from me.

    2. mark l 2 Silver badge

      What you are failing to spot is that Apple have no desire to let people have a more open operating system such as MacOS on their iPad pro, in fact im sure the ultimate goal of Apple is to lock down MacOS to make it more like iOS and then eventually merge it with iOS so they will have just one OS across all their devices. Then they get to gate keep what software you can install, and of course take a 30% cut of any purchases and subscriptions.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        We know this. Almost everybody knows this. We know Apple are scum. Sure there hardware is nice looking but their OS is terrible. MacOS is still stuck in 2001 and is less desirable to me than Mint. This is a big shift for me as I loved MacOSX for the first few version. It was an amazing OS at the time and blew everything out of the water. Now, the OS is clown-like.

        Same for iOS. It is terrible compared to Android. It feels like it's 10 years old. After 4 months of using an iPhone I can honestly say that it is rubbish even compare to a £300 Andriod phone. The ONLY thing the iphone has going for it is that it is pretty. It is the bimbo of mobiles.

        Where once an Apple laptop users was cool, now they reek of Argos.

        I thank the Lord daily for Mint.

    3. HelpfulJohn

      Can't the iPads be hacked to stuff MacOS onto them?

      Or does that void the warranty?

  8. simonlb Silver badge
    Stop

    How much????

    According to The Verge, the 13-inch iPad Pro with 2Tb of storage is $2,299 for the WiFi only model, and $2,499 for the WiFi and Cellular model. Two and a half grand? For a tablet? With the best will in the world, why would you spend that much on a tablet when you could get a really well specced laptop and still have a chunk of cash left over? It makes no sense whatsoever, but the sheeple Apple faithful will buy them regardless.

  9. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Wake me when

    they use this chip in a laptop with up-gradable RAM and a replaceable SSD. I also have no use for thin if it means a battery that can't be replaced and can only survive off the charger for a hour at a time. Neural Unit? This makes me more money how, exactly?

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: Wake me when

      The RAM is, for reasons of performance, on the package.

      If you want more storage then there will be ports for you to attach it to - I'm still expecting a thunderbolt ram extention module given that sharing video card memory has been a thing for a while now.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Wake me when

      With all due respect, you clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Apple moved to System-on-a-Chip/unified memory architecture. It's a large reason why the M1(+) chips are so fast.

      By having everything built into the chip, they've removed the system bus. The on-chip memory performs (at least in bandwidth terms) more like cache memory than RAM.

      There's a reason DDR5 SD Ram runs at a theoretical maximum speed of 64MBps, and Unified Memory runs at a real world speed of 128MBps, and there's a reason the M chips are blowing the competition apart.

      And you've clearly never used any recent Apple device if you think they only last an hour. As well as offering improved performance, they also offer significant efficiency savings. If you use a modern Macbook casually (i.e. for a few hours per day for browsing), the battery will last you for a week or more. Pick an online battery stress test, you'll probably find the Macbook models lead the way, at 16+ hours. This is also due (partially at least) to System-on-a-Chip.

      There are a ton of valid reasons to call Apple out, the ones you've suggested (moving to a unified memory architecture and battery life) are definitely not amongst them. Microsoft, Google and Amazon are all playing catch up and moving in this direction.

  10. MSArm

    How many models of iPad does one need?

    I like Apple kit, but it's getting silly now.

    What's the next Apple watch going to have, an extra hole in the wristband?

  11. breakfast

    Not going to lie, the "watch us crush all the things that make human creativity valuable" advert they're running for the new IPad feels like a truly gargantuan failure to read the room.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Given that the chamber in question contains people who have felt the need to express their upset about an advertisement, failure to read the room may be a feature and not a bug.

      It'd be interesting to see the demographic breakdown of a, people who complain about iPad adverts, b, people who actually buy the expensive iPads. I expect the latter group is older (and richer) than the former, and likely not too fussed about what the kids are saying.

    2. Detective Emil

      Maybe just trying to get their own back after all those "Does it b(l)end?" YouTube videos.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And did you see the advert?

    The one where they were crushing loads of entertainment and musical instruments in a press to fit it all into the iPad. Quite controversial.

    Delphian Records fixed it for them by making a version of the advert played backwards slowly. All that stuff unfolding out and putting itself back together makes a much better advert than crushing it all....

    1. MrBanana

      Re: And did you see the advert?

      The advert is awful. I see it is getting some adverse media attention in the UK at least. Apple have apologised in their usual half arsed way. They have agreed it was ill judged and decided not to play it on TV, but it is still available on Tim Cook's X account and Youtube.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fourth?

    "fourth of the power draw" ... what?

    We have a word for that: 'Quarter'.

    #newspeak

  14. Amorous Cow Turd

    The ultimate ...

    ... porn / facebook / amazon / ebay device - all the gear, but no idea!

  15. HelpfulJohn

    Cannibalise to upgrade my Mini?

    Is it theoretically possible to cannibalise the new iPad to put its M4 chip into my M2 Mini?

    I like my Mini a lot but I suspect that I'd like it even more if it had two CPU's and more memory.

    I'm not thinling of doing this myself, of course, but I know a guy who'se Authorised. :)

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