Apple's silicon initiative opened with a flourish with the M1 chip, but that was just the tip of Cupertino's spear to break away from Intel processors. The rumored Apple M2 chip could further shake up the semiconductor world by driving that spear deeper into the Mac and iPad lineup.

Six months have passed since the Apple M1 chip was first seen in the latest MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, but enough time has passed for leaks and speculation about a second-generation Apple Silicon chip in development. Initially thought to be called the "M1X," we now hear murmurs that the next Apple chip, based on ARM's RISC architecture, will be a genuine second-generation upgrade.

Such a chip could be found in the refreshed MacBook Pro 2021 lineup or in the new 27-inch iMac. At this point, we only have leaked information, but it is reasonably promising. So here is what we know so far about the Apple M2 chip.

Recent leaks indicate that the Apple M2 chip is already in production and should be ready as early as July. This means that it could be unveiled at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in the summer.

The chip could be unveiled as the next step in the Apple Silicon initiative. Alternatively, it could be unveiled in a refreshed or redesigned MacBook Pro 16-inch 2021. The redesigned 27-inch iMac could also be unveiled at the same time.

If not in the summer, the M2 chip would appear in the fall; it could be unveiled at the same time as the iPhone 13, which is expected to appear in September. Or more likely, the M2 will be revealed at another Mac- or iPad-related event that could take place between September and November.

The M1 chip impressed us and others in the computing world with its performance over the latest 11th generation Intel Tiger Lake processors. And the M2 chip is expected to go even further.

The M2 is said to be manufactured on a 4nm fabrication node, rather than the 5nm process used by the previous model. Therefore, higher performance and efficiency can be expected in M2 due to the increased number of transistors on a slice of silicon.

According to another leak, the M2 will have 12 CPU cores, four more than the M1, with eight cores for high-performance tasks and four pairs of efficient cores for less-intensive tasks.

In addition, the M1 chip's 7-8 core GPU will be increased to 16 cores in the M2. This should result in a significant increase in graphics processing power, which should not only improve gaming performance, but also allow Macs equipped with this chip to handle demanding video rendering and graphics-based workloads.

Apple's M1-powered MacBooks were introduced last November, less than a year ago, and the iPad Pro 2021 has just received the M1 treatment.

As such, we expect M2 to debut on the new 16-inch MacBook Pro. Nevertheless, Apple could revamp its entire MacBook Pro line all at once in the fall. It will offer slimmer display bezels and other design tweaks to make the Cupertino laptop compete with the best Windows 10 machines, like the Dell XPS 15.

And if Apple were to redesign the 27-inch iMac, it would certainly take advantage of the M2. We expect the additional power of the M2 to push Apple's larger iMac design further than the smaller iMac 2021.

Apple's in-house chips for the iPhone and iPad have always performed admirably, and the M1 shows that Cupertino can do the same with laptop-grade silicon. If the latest M2 leaks are to be believed, M2 could be the chip that Apple builds on its brilliant start and begins to deliver a chip that shows that desktop-grade computing need not be the domain of x86-based AMD and Intel chips.

And where Apple goes, others will follow; if the M2 proves to be a chip that can deliver serious professional performance to large MacBooks and iMacs, more Windows 10 machines may start looking to ARM-based custom chips .