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When Apple unveiled its first M1 system-on-a-chip for PCs in mid-2020, it said it would migrate all Macs to its Apple Silicon SoC in about two years. By this time, the company had to introduce its own Mac Pro workstation equipped with its own processor. But that hasn’t happened, and it’s actually unclear when that desktop will appear, according to a Bloomberg report.
Initially, Apple planned to build its new Mac Pro around the M1 Ultra dual-chip processor, but that device ended up being the most powerful Mac Studio desktop, and the company canceled Mac Pro production for the M1 generation. Ultimately, the company decided to use its dual-chip M2 Ultra and quad-chip M2 Extreme processors for its high-end workstation.
The M2 Ultra is said to have 24 general-purpose cores and 76 graphics clusters, while the M2 Extreme has 48 general-purpose CPU cores as well as 152 graphics clusters. Additionally, the M2 Ultra is reportedly designed to support at least 192GB of storage, so expect the M2 Extreme version to support up to 384GB of DRAM.
But Apple seems to have scrapped plans to produce the M2 Extreme processor due to complexity and cost. The alleged M2 Extreme processor-based Mac Pro will cost around $10,000 and will be a very niche product that may not be worth the development costs, engineering resources and speed of production. Bloomberg says
However, the Mac Pro is likely To be an extremely capable workstation for a relatively small niche market. The main thing to remember about Apple’s Mac Pro is its audience. Although Bloomberg While the report vaguely mentions demanding users such as “photographers, editors and programmers,” the Mac Pro is much more than a powerful computer. Mac Pro systems are often used for film and video production, and such workloads become more demanding as resolution and color depth increase. And such systems require not only performance, but also the versatility and flexibility of a desktop computer, as they need various additional cards, accelerators, advanced storage devices, etc. To add these boards, the new Mac Pro will need advanced I/O, which is somewhat of a departure from Apple’s SoC ideology, which involves a very high level of integration.
One feature of Apple’s Mac Pro — and one that the company’s other systems lack — is upgradeability. A previous Mac Pro user would often buy a tower, then install a new graphics card, add more memory or Apple’s Afterburner accelerator. It’s unclear if there will be an update to the Apple Silicon-based desktop, but from what we can see with the Apple Studio machine, the company is reluctant to offer such capabilities even to its pro users.
Notably, in addition to switching the Mac Pro to its own Apple Silicon processors, the company is considering moving its production and final assembly from China and the US to Vietnam. This will reduce its costs somewhat, but given the price of the Mac Pro, it won’t make any difference to end users.
One thing Bloomberg’s report doesn’t address is when the new Mac Pro will hit the market. So far, Apple has only unveiled its M2 SoC and is yet to launch its M2 Pro and M2 Max SoC. Meanwhile, the multi-chip M2 Ultra and potential M2 Extreme are typically introduced a few months after the single-chip SoCs, meaning these processors likely won’t arrive until mid-2023.
Apple certainly doesn’t comment on future plans, but it’s time for the company to offer an updated version of the Mac Pro, as the current generation machine was released in 2019.
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