Putting the New M4 Macs to the Test

Apple's new M4 chips have garnered attention for their performance in machine learning and computer vision tasks, as demonstrated by Roboflow's benchmarks using their open-source Inference suite. The M4 and M4 Pro models notably outperformed earlier Apple Silicon devices, such as the M1 Max, with the M4 Pro achieving nearly three times the speed on popular models like yolov8n-640. The M4 chips excelled particularly in segmentation tasks, achieving significant speedups that make real-time applications more feasible. This performance boost is largely attributed to the Scalable Matrix Extension (SME) in the M4 chips, which enhances matrix multiplication efficiency—a critical aspect of neural networks—by integrating more compute units, wider data paths, and support for BFloat16 data types. The transition from Apple's proprietary AMX to the SME design simplifies the use of these capabilities for developers. Roboflow plans to upgrade its developers to M4 Max MacBook Pros, anticipating improved workflows and faster iteration cycles. The company is committed to fostering a robust ecosystem that supports developers in leveraging these advancements in computer vision technology.