Apple plans a series of new M1 Mac processors for introduction as early as 2021 that are aimed at outperforming Intel’s fastest, reports Bloomberg. They’ll be used in updated MacBook Pros, iMacs, and a new Mac Pro workstation.
If they live up to expectations, they’ll “significantly outpace the performance of the latest machines running Intel chips,” according to “people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the plans aren’t yet public.”
The Sellers Research Group (that’s me) thinks we’ll see new iMacs (at least a 24-inch model and, hopefully, a 32-incher) and MacBook Pros (14-inch and 16-inch) in the first half of 2021. All will sport completely new designs. I expect the Mac Pro workstation not to arrive until late summer or early fall along with a redesigned MacBook Air.
iBloomberg says that, for higher-end desktop computers, planned for later in 2021 and a new half-sized Mac Pro planned to launch by 2022, Apple is testing a chip design with as many as 32 high-performance cores.
What’s more, Bloomberg says that Apple engineers are also developing more ambitious graphics processors. Today’s M1 processors are offered with a custom Apple graphics engine that comes in either 7- or 8-core variations. For its future high-end laptops and mid-range desktops, Apple is testing 16-core and 32-core graphics parts.
For later in 2021 or 2022, Apple is purportedly working on pricier graphics upgrades with 64 and 128 dedicated cores aimed at its highest-end machines. Bloomberg says “those graphics chips would be several times faster than the current graphics modules Apple uses from Nvidia and AMD in its Intel-powered hardware.”
On November 10, Apple announced M1, the most powerful chip it has ever created and the first chip designed specifically for the Mac. As a system on a chip (SoC), M1 combines numerous technologies into a single chip, and features a unified memory architecture for dramatically improved performance and efficiency.
Apple says M1 is the first personal computer chip built using cutting-edge 5-nanometer process technology and is packed with an astounding 16 billion transistors, the most Apple has ever put into a chip. It features the world’s fastest CPU core in low-power silicon, the world’s best CPU performance per watt, the world’s fastest integrated graphics in a personal computer, and breakthrough machine learning performance with the Apple Neural Engine.
As a result, M1 delivers up to 3.5x faster CPU performance, up to 6x faster GPU performance, and up to 15x faster machine learning, all while enabling battery life up to 2x longer than previous-generation Macs, according to Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies.
