New report reveals Apple’s roadmap for when each Mac will move to Apple Silicon

[Karlston]

New report reveals Apple’s roadmap for when each Mac will move to Apple Silicon

High-end Macs could have as many as 32 performance cores to the M1's four.

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Citing sources close to Apple, a new report in Bloomberg outlines Apple's roadmap for moving the entire Mac lineup to the company's own custom-designed silicon, including both planned release windows for specific products and estimations as to how many performance CPU cores those products will have.

 

The M1, which has four performance cores (alongside four efficiency cores), launched this fall in the company's lowest-end computers—namely, the MacBook Air and comparatively low-cost variants of the Mac mini and 13-inch MacBook Pro. These machines have less memory and fewer ports than the company's more expensive devices. The Macs with more memory or ports, such as the 16-inch MacBook Pro, are still sold with Intel CPUs.

 

According to the report's sources, Apple plans to release new Apple Silicon-based versions of the 16-inch MacBook Pro and the higher-end 13-inch MacBook Pro configurations in 2021, with the first chips appropriate for at least some of these computers arriving as early as spring, and likely all of them by fall. New iMac models that share CPU configurations with high-end MacBook Pros are also expected next year.

 

The Mac Pro, on the other hand, would not arrive until 2022, which is the year that Apple has said it plans to complete its silicon transition. That suggests the Mac Pro may be the last machine to make the leap.

 

New chips for the high-end MacBook Pro and iMac computers could have as many as 16 performance cores (the M1 has four). And the planned Mac Pro replacement could have as many as 32. The report is careful to clarify that Apple could, for one reason or another, choose to only release Macs with 8 or 12 cores at first but that the company is working on chip variants with the higher core count, in any case.

 

The report reveals two other tidbits. First, a direct relative to the M1 will power new iPad Pro models due to be introduced next year, and second, the faster M1 successors for the MacBook Pro and desktop computers will also feature more GPU cores for graphics processing—specifically, 16 or 32 cores. Further, Apple is working on "pricier graphics upgrades with 64 and 128 dedicated cores aimed at its highest-end machines" for 2022 or late 2021.

 

When Ars reviewed the M1 Mac mini and MacBook Air, we found that performance handily bested counterpart Macs with Intel chips.

 

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Apple says it has achieved these performance improvements in part because of a newly refined unified memory architecture that allows the CPU, GPU, and other components to quickly access data in the same shared pool of fast memory without losing efficiency to moving or copying the data around.

 

When we interviewed Apple executives Craig Federighi, Greg Joswiak, and Johny Srouji, they claimed that the M1 is only the beginning of the performance leap for Macs based on this architecture.

Enlarge / The chart they referred to.

Samuel Axon

They pointed to the above chart and indicated that while the M1 in the MacBook Air sits at the 10W line on that chart, the performance line continues to scale upward. Up that scale is where next year's new chips could fall.

 

When Apple first announced its custom silicon shift at its developer conference earlier this year, it said it expects to complete the transition from Intel within two years—which fits with the timeline this Bloomberg report has laid out. Still, it's important to note that delays and changes to the designs of these chips are always a possibility when looking as far out as 2022.

 

Listing image by Lee Hutchinson

 

 

New report reveals Apple’s roadmap for when each Mac will move to Apple Silicon

 

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[Karlston]

Apple reportedly working on a 32-core processor for high-end Macs

A new half-sized Mac Pro is planned for launch by 2022 

Apple’s M1 processor (pictured) is its first processor designed for the Mac.

Image: Apple

Apple is working on a new ARM-based processor with as many as 32 high-performance CPU cores that could appear in a Mac in late 2021, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The processor could also appear in a new “half-sized Mac Pro” in 2022. Alongside it, the company is also reportedly developing CPU designs with up to 16 high-performance cores and four power-efficient cores which are destined for new versions of the MacBook Pro and iMac. The new processors could arrive as early as spring 2021. Future Apple Silicon designs could also feature GPUs with up to 128 dedicated cores.

 

News of the upcoming processors comes as Apple has just released its first Macs powered by its own chips. The new MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, and Mac mini each used the company’s M1 chip, which features a CPU with four high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores. However, the company’s more powerful machines like the Mac Pro continue to use Intel chips. Apple has said it intends to transition its whole Mac lineup onto its own chips over the course of two years.

Apple’s existing M1 chip comes with 8 CPU cores; 4 high-performance cores, and 4 efficiency cores.

Image: Apple

As well as the increased CPU core count, Bloomberg reports that Apple is also working on chips with more GPU cores. While the current M1 chip comes with either seven or eight GPU cores, Apple is currently testing models with 16 and 32-cores, and is working on chips with as many as 128 for late 2021 or 2022.

The M1 chip has up to eight dedicated GPU cores.

Image: Apple

Although Apple is working on a processor design with 16 high-performance CPU cores, Bloomberg notes that it might choose to release it with only eight or 12 cores enabled, depending on how mass production goes.

 

Prior to Apple’s announcement of its switch to ARM-based processors, Bloomberg reported that it was working on a processor with a CPU featuring eight high-performance cores and four energy-efficient cores. A processor with this exact combination of cores is yet to be officially announced.

 

Considering Apple’s ambitious plans to move its entire Mac lineup onto its own silicon in the next two years, it makes sense that it has more powerful chips in development. Its first ARM-based Macs have impressed thanks to their combination of power-efficiency and performance, but matching the capabilities of its more powerful Intel-based machines like the Mac Pro is likely to be a far bigger challenge.

 

 

Apple reportedly working on a 32-core processor for high-end Macs

[zanderthunder]

By moving to Apple Silicon, it means that hardware expansion and upgrades might not be possible anymore. So one must carefully consider before buying.