Mac Pro M1 Max “Max”: how Apple would aim for a new power record – Frandroid

After the iMac, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro, the next PC on Apple’s list to upgrade to Apple Silicon is expected to be the Mac Pro. Its most powerful PC already promises a lot.

Credit: iFixit / Apple

After testing the MacBook Pro and its M1 Max chip, we are inevitably impatient to see how far Apple can push its new architecture by replacing Intel little by little on all its configurations. The next machine on the worktop should very logically be the Mac Pro, the stationary PC marketed by Apple from 6,500 euros and its most powerful PC in the catalog. Will Apple really be able to compete with Intel on a machine where heat dissipation is no longer a problem and where the competition can therefore perform at its best?

According to The Information site, the next Mac Pro would in fact be entitled to a variation of the M1 Max chip that we know today.

A huge M1 Max processor

Apple would not therefore have designed a new architecture for its stationary PC, but would continue to use the M1 architecture already used on almost all of its range of PCs. As with the M1 Pro, then the M1 Max, Apple would simply increase the number of cores on its chip, to increase its performance on optimized applications.

The new Mac Pro would be entitled to two configurations:

• Mac Pro M1 Max 1: 20-core CPU (16 high-performance cores and 4 low-power cores)
• Mac Pro M1 Max 2: 40-core CPU (32 high-performance cores and 8 low-power cores)

Recall that the M1 Max chip of the Macbook Pro is equipped with a 10-core CPU (8 high-performance cores and 2 low-consumption cores). We understand here that Apple seems “simply” to integrate 2 or 3 chips Apple M1 Max, by increasing the number of cores in a linear fashion. The workstations, the category of PC to which the Mac Pro belongs, are customary motherboards with several sockets and several linked processors. Here Apple would take up this concept with its similar architecture.

It remains to be seen how the technological integration would be carried out. Using multiple processors on one machine is not an easy task, especially with the high-speed unified memory system used by Apple. The processors must indeed work perfectly in harmony, without creating latency in the transfer of tasks from one processor to another.

The other hypothesis is that Apple instead resorts to the development of a single giant and monolithic chip, integrating such a large number of cores. We can then ask the question of the size of the chip when the M1 Max chip already incorporates 57 billion transistors and is already considered a giant chip. It is hard to imagine a chip 2 to 4 times larger.

We will have to wait to learn more about this new machine to better understand the achievement of Apple. We imagine that this new Mac should be unveiled during the year 2022 to complete the renewal of the Apple catalog towards the Apple Silicon architecture, definitively retiring the Intel machines.