Whoa. New Geekbench benchmark results show that the high-end iPad Pro rivals the latest 15-inch MacBook Pros with Intel Core i7 CPUs. Which means that it’s not of “if,” but “when” Apple introduces Macs with processors the company itself makes.
Geekbench scores show that the top-of-the-line iPad Pro — an eight-core tablet with the rumored 6GB of RAM allegedly found in 1TB storage configurations — show single-core scores between 5030 to 5083, with multi-core scores ranging from 17771 to 17995. Those numbers place the new iPad Pro directly between Apple’s 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Pros with Intel Core i7 processors.
The new iPad Pro outperforms the single-core speed of the 15-inch machine configuration that starts at $2,799, as well as the multi-core speed of the 13-inch MacBook Pro configuration that starts at $2,099. Pricing for the new Apple tablet with 1TB storage configurations starts at $1,549.
Apple is already building its own iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch chips. It has also created fingerprint chips, and designed a chip for its AirPods that allows pairing with other Apple hardware. The tech giant also built the AI chip powering facial recognition in the upcoming iPhone X. It seems obvious (to me, anyway) that the company’s next move is to build custom processors for its Macs.
