Built on a 2nd generation 5nm manufacturing process, the M2 is pretty much an updated M1 chip, but, according to Apple, packs 25 percent more transistors compared to the M1 chip. While numbers do not add, since the M1 chip packed around 16 billion transistors and the M2 one goes over 20 billion, we'll have to take Apple's word for it.

The M2 chip has an 8-core CPU (4+4-configuration), with four high-performance and four high-efficiency cores, and can be configured with up to a 10-core GPU, promising 18 higher CPU, and 35 percent higher GPU performance. The M2 chip switches to LPDDR5 memory with support for up to 24GB of unified memory with 100GB/s of unified memory bandwidth. The 16-core Neural Engine has also been updated pushing up to 15.8 trillion operations per second or 40 percent faster compared to the M1 chip.

Apple was also keen to note that the M2 chip offer "industry-leading performance per watt", showing a couple of graphs that show relative performance with power consumption, showing impressive improvements for both CPU and GPU, compared to the M1 chip and 10-core/12-core laptops.

The media engine has also been updated, adding ProRes support and support for multiple 8K/4K streams.

As noted, the new Apple M2 chip will debut in the new MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro, both expected on the market in July.