Intel Core i7-5550U vs Apple M2 Pro vs Apple M2

Intel Core i7-5550U

The Intel Core i7-5550U is an ULV (ultra low voltage) dual-core processor based on the Broadwell architecture, which has been launched in January 2015. In addition to two CPU cores with Hyper-Threading clocked at 2.0 - 3.0 GHz (2 Cores: 2.9 GHz), the chip also integrates an HD Graphics 6000 GPU and a dual-channel LPDDR3-1866/DDR3L-1600 memory controller. The Core i7 is manufactured in a 14 nm process with FinFET transistors.

Compared to the Core i7-5500U, the i7-5550U features a lower CPU base clock, but integrates a somewhat faster GPU.

Architecture

Broadwell represents the "Tick" in Intel's Tick-Tock model, which means a shrink of its predecessor Haswell. The new 14 nm manufacturing process with three-dimensional FinFET transistors allows not only improvements in energy efficiency, but also a significantly smaller die size fit for more compact packages and devices.

Further advantages result from the revised microarchitecture of Broadwell. Due to its improved branch prediction, bigger buffer sizes (1500 instead of 1000 entries in the L2 TLB) and other tweaks, the performance per clock has been increased by more than 5 percent over its predecessor. There are also some new instruction set extensions designed for cryptographic applications.

Performance

Thanks to its improved architecture, the Core i7-5550U ends up 5 - 15 percent faster than the slightly lower clocked Core i7-4550U (Haswell, 15 W) and matches the Core i5-4258U (Haswell, 28 W). Thus, the CPU has sufficient power for office and multimedia purposes as well as more demanding applications and multitasking.

Graphics

The integrated HD Graphics 6000 offers 48 Execution Units (EUs) clocked at 300 - 1000 MHz. Similar to the CPU core, the GPU architecture (Intel Gen 8) has been thoroughly revised for improved performance-per-clock. In addition, the GPU benefits from faster memory speeds up to LPDDR3-1866 (Haswell: DDR3-1600). We expect the HD Graphics 6000 to be significantly faster than the former HD Graphics 5000 (40 EUs), part of the Haswell generation. Nevertheless, demanding games as of 2015 should be playable only in low or medium settings.

Broadwell is the first Intel chip to fully support DirectX 11.2 as well as OpenCL 1.3/2.0 and OpenGL 4.3. Video will output natively via DisplayPort 1.2 or HDMI 1.4a. However, the new HDMI 2.0 standard is not supported.

Power Consumption

The i7-5550U is rated at a TDP of 15 W (9.5 W cTDP Down) including the graphics card, memory controller, VRMs and the integrated chipset. Therefore, the CPU is suited even for small ultrabooks 11-inches and greater.

Apple M2 Pro

The Apple M2 Pro is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the early 2023 MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch models. It offers all 12 cores available in the chip divided in eight performance cores (P-cores) and four power-efficiency cores (E-cores). The E-cores clock with up to 3.4 GHz, the P-Cores up to 3.7 GHz (mostly 3.3 GHz in multi-threaded workloads and 3.4 GHz in single threaded).

The big cores (codename Avalanche) offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 36 MB shared L2 cache (up from 24 MB in the M1 Pro). The four efficiency cores (codename Blizzard) are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. CPU and GPU can both use the 24 MB SLC (System Level Cache). 

The unified memory (16 or 32 GB LPDDR5-6400) next to the chip is connected by a 256 Bit memory controller (200 GB/s bandwidth) and can be used by the GPU and CPU.

Apple states that the M2 Pro has a 25% higher performance than the M1 Pro in Xcode compiling.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 Pro offers all 19 cores.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine (faster than M1 Pro), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders (including ProRes).

The M2 Pro is manufactured in 5 nm at TSMC (second generation) and integrates 40 billion transistors. 

Apple M2

The Apple M2 is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2022 MacBook Air and, MacBook Pro 13. It offers 8 cores divided in four performance cores and four power-efficiency cores. The big cores offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 16 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB). The four efficiency cores are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with  up to 2,4 GHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with up to 3,5 GHz and therefore higher than the M1 cores. The architecture should be similar to the A15 (iPhone 13) with Avalanche and Blizzard cores.

The chip features a unified memory architecture for the CPU and GPU cores and supports up to 24 GB LPDDR5-6400 for a bandwidth of up to 100GB/s.

According to Apple, the M2 offers a 18% higher CPU performance at the same power consumption level compared to the Apple M1. In our tests, the MacBook Pro 13 with active cooling was able to reach the 18% in Geekbench Multi. In other benchmarks we measured 12 to 15% gains compared to the M1. Therefore, the performance is now near the M1 Pro with 8 cores. The passively cooled MacBook Air may however suffer from throttling in longer load scenarios.

The integrated graphics card in the M2 offers 8 or 10 cores and a peak performance of 3.6 TFLOPs.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine with a peak performance of 16 TOPS (for AI hardware acceleration), a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), Thunderbolt / USB 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders.

The Apple M2 includes 20 billion transistors (up from the 16 billion of the M1) and is manufactured in the second generation 5nm process at TSMC (most likely N5P). The power consumption is rated at 20W what we also measured under CPU load.