Yes, and why? way to not address the question at all.
Are you asking why the M2 is faster than the i5?
Well I was asking whether there is something in the Mac Kernel which makes it faster or is it just the different CPUs/Memory that account for this?
According to general benchmarks Apple Silicon is the highest performing CPU for single-threaded work. It'll be hard to confirm how much of a difference the OS factors in but the hardware difference is most likely why.