The Mac Pro is the machine that will mark the transition of Macs from Intel processors to Apple Silicon chips. It is he who will confirm that Apple’s ARM chips can stand up to any Intel offer, and yet the latest indiscretions suggest that this machine will be a bit… disappointing.
He is late ! The Mac Pro, which was supposed to close with a bang the great transition of Macs from Intel processors to Apple Silicon chips, is being desired, and the latest rumors have raised questions… or even worry.
New design, it’s grated
The latest Mac Pro made some smile with its cheese grater design. The arrival of the Mac Studio then demonstrated that a new, more compact and closed design was possible thanks to Apple Silicon chips. Rumors then indicated that the Mac Pro could benefit from a new case, inspired by that of the Mac Studio. However, it seems that you can take your cheese out of the refrigerator, according to Mark Gurman, Apple will keep the design of its Mac Pro for this first generation Apple Silicon.
A not-so-scalable setup
We could be delighted because it could guarantee a good modularity to the future Mac Pro, since it was one of the strong points of the last generation Intel, which allows you to choose between five Xeon processors, from 32 GB to 1.5 TB of RAM, one or two graphics cards, etc.
The arrival of Apple Silicon chips, which combine central processor (CPU) and graphics processor (GPU) on the same die, will obviously reduce the variety of configurations available. The operation of the chips, which use unified memory, could also impose limits on the customization of configurations. Until now, RAM has always been soldered into Apple Silicon Macs. It looks like it will be in the future Mac Pro. It will not be possible to add RAM later, it will once again be soldered to the motherboard.
The choice of unified memory, shared between the CPU and the GPU, represents another approach than the more classic one known with x86 chips. It invalidates the comparison of platforms with an equivalent amount of RAM. The M1 Ultra, the most powerful of the Apple Silicon chips of the M1 generation, is in any case far from being able to manage as much RAM as the most powerful Xeons currently offered in the Mac Pro Intel: 128 GB against 1.5 TB. This delta risks dissatisfying certain professionals who need to load large models into memory for their calculations. We will therefore have to see what the M2 Ultra will offer, for example.
One can imagine that Apple will find other ways to create functional differences between the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro.
According to Mark Gurman, it will still be possible to increase the storage capacity, upgrade the network port and more surprisingly, the graphics card. Will it be the ability to add an external graphics card? Which would imply a super fast connection with the SoC to avoid bottlenecks. Or are we talking about some kind of Afterburner card here, to access the video processing, even if the media engines integrated into SoCs play at least part of this role?
No M2 Extreme
For the record, Mark Gurman indicated, shortly before Christmas, that Apple would have been forced to abandon its project to introduce an M2 Extreme chip for the Mac Pro. As the M2 Ultra will be the merger of two M2 Max SoCs, the M2 Extreme was to be that of two M2 Ultra. Problem this gigantic chip would cost too much to produce. The Mac Pro will therefore not be entitled to this overpowered SoC which was to carry up to 48 CPU cores and 152 GPU cores.
The Mac Pro will certainly be an impressive machine, but far less than rumors and hopes had it. Mark Gurman also showered another hope of Mac intended for professionals. The journalist from Bloomberg confirms in his newsletter that Apple has indeed been working on an iMac Pro for some time, sometimes abandoning the project before resuming it. On the other hand, he indicates that the Cupertino giant would have no intention of marketing an Apple Silicon model this year. Even the ‘classic’ 24-inch iMac, which was introduced in 2021 with an M1, he says won’t be updated until the arrival of the M3, which may not be unveiled until late 2023 or early. 2024. In short, without any alarms going off, Apple’s great journey towards its own chips may not be as idyllic as its first months would have you think.
Bloomberg
