Apple's Rumored M2 Mac Pro Sounds Like A Beastly Machine
Two years after Apple announced its plans to shift the Macintosh platform from Intel's x86 platform to Apple's ARM-based chips, the transition is nearly complete. As of October 2022, nearly every Mac product from Apple — including the MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and the iMac — have wholly transitioned to Apple Silicon. In March 2022, Apple introduced a new product called the Mac Studio, which is a high-end desktop computer based on Apple Silicon. The Mac Studio uses the Apple M1 Ultra chip, which is by far the most powerful chipset the company has designed. The M1 Ultra chip and the Mac Studio are important products for Apple and served as a platform for the company to showcase the advanced capabilities of these chipsets.
One product that is yet to make the official switch to Apple Silicon is the Mac Pro. For the uninitiated, Apple's Mac Pro systems are workstations designed to be used in professional environments that require large amounts of computing power. The last Mac Pro was released in 2019 and used Intel's Xeon chips in 8, 12, 16, 24, and 28-core configurations. Given that the Mac Pro lineup sits above the M1 Ultra-powered Mac Studio — which is already an insanely powerful computer — enthusiasts can't wait to find out how powerful the Apple Silicon-powered Mac Studio will be. Turns out, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg knows a thing or two about the next-generation Mac Pro and has detailed them in his latest weekly newsletter.
Everything we know about the Apple Silicon-powered Mac Pro
Mark Gurman believes that the next-generation Mac Pro's processor options would make those machines at least four times as powerful as the Apple M2 Max. These chips, which are still undergoing tests within Apple, do not have a name yet, but Gurman refers to them as the M2 Ultra and the M2 Extreme. Gurman adds that the next-gen Mac Pro could come in 24-core and 48-core CPU configurations. In terms of graphics, these machines may feature 76 or 152 graphics cores.
Gurman also revealed the alleged spec sheet of the Mac Pro variant that is supposedly undergoing tests at Apple's office. He claims that this prototype gets 24 CPU cores (16 performance and 8 efficiency) and 76 graphics cores along with 192GB of memory. Interestingly, this machine also ran macOS Ventura (which was just released on October 24). Apple still has no official word about the Mac Pro's availability. However, the company did confirm (via 9to5Mac) earlier this year that a new Mac Pro is in the works. In addition to the Mac Pro, Apple is likely to refresh its lineup of 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models soon.
Gurman estimates that the launch of updated M2-powered Mac systems should commence in the first half of 2023. It remains to be seen whether Apple will be able to finish working on the Mac Pro by then.