New Mac Pro in Q4 2022 expected to cap off Apple Silicon transition
Apple will reportedly complete its transition to Apple Silicon by the fourth quarter of 2022 with the release of a new Mac Pro.
Redesigned Mac Pro
In a tweet on Monday, leaker DylanDKT said that the Apple Silicon transition will officially end when Apple releases a Mac Pro equipped with an upgraded Apple Silicon chip.
The new M-series chip won't be an extension of the "M2," the leaker added. Instead, it'll be an update on the M1 that brings more cores than the M1 Max.
DylanDKT said in a subsequent tweet that there could also be one additional configuration of a larger iMac with a higher-end chip.
The leaker's rumor echoes a report from August 2021 indicating that Apple would hit its two-year transition timeline with the release of an updated Mac Pro.
Apple kicked off its Apple Silicon transition in November 2020. The company first updated models like the Mac mini, MacBook Air, and 13-inch MacBook Pro before moving onto the 24-inch iMac and 2021 MacBook Pro models.
Back in May 2021, reports indicated that Apple could debut a new Mac Pro with an upgraded design and an Apple Silicon chip that could sport as many as 40 processing cores and 128 graphics cores.
Read on AppleInsider
Redesigned Mac Pro
In a tweet on Monday, leaker DylanDKT said that the Apple Silicon transition will officially end when Apple releases a Mac Pro equipped with an upgraded Apple Silicon chip.
The new M-series chip won't be an extension of the "M2," the leaker added. Instead, it'll be an update on the M1 that brings more cores than the M1 Max.
DylanDKT said in a subsequent tweet that there could also be one additional configuration of a larger iMac with a higher-end chip.
The leaker's rumor echoes a report from August 2021 indicating that Apple would hit its two-year transition timeline with the release of an updated Mac Pro.
Apple kicked off its Apple Silicon transition in November 2020. The company first updated models like the Mac mini, MacBook Air, and 13-inch MacBook Pro before moving onto the 24-inch iMac and 2021 MacBook Pro models.
Back in May 2021, reports indicated that Apple could debut a new Mac Pro with an upgraded design and an Apple Silicon chip that could sport as many as 40 processing cores and 128 graphics cores.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
2020
Isn’t this “rumor” rather pointless when we all know Apple said it would be a two year transition, which ends Fall of 2022, and all assumed the Mac Pro would be the last system to make the transition.
Apple is going to wait until there’s enough M1X SoCs stocked up before they announce the M1 “Duo” and M1 “Quad” based systems. Especially after they release the larger iMac which will surely eat into that stock.
if the quad max takes until the end of 2022 then add “have.”
AMD is supposed to have 5nm zen 4 out later this year. For high end systems, at least 64 cores.
https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-pro-3995wx/p/N82E16819113675
https://www.amazon.com/AMD-Ryzen-Threadripper-PRO-3995WX/dp/B08V5HPXVY/
That's $7-8k just for the CPU. The GPU performance would be about 30% higher than a $3k Nvidia 3090, e.g an Nvidia 3090ti:
https://www.amazon.com/NVIDIA-RTX-3090-Founders-Graphics/dp/B08HR6ZBYJ/
In late 2022, AMD is saying they can double the performance with Zen 4 on 5nm and Nvidia will likely have a 1.5-2x 4090. But, it will still cost around $10k for those parts. Apple can sell a quad M1 Max for $3k. Even if Zen 4 and 4090 is 1.5-2x the performance due to higher power usage, an M1 Max Quad would be really competitive.
Apple currently sells Mac Pro hardware that is way behind Threadripper chips, they don't need to compete with them on raw performance but the special hardware they have can offer huge improvements. Someone here compared their PC with 3090 against M1 Max and the Max chip beat it for render/export times in some cases:
Multiply that by 4 and for people in those workflows, a 2x improvement on the PC side is still half.
Furthermore, I think you're cherry picking your straw man. The TR 3990x (Dropping the 'w') costs much less (in the $3k to $4k range) but has about the same performance (64 cores). The difference between x and wx is the amount of RAM it can handle. The 3990x maxes out at 256 GB of RAM. I would presume that since a single M1Max maxes out at 64GB of RAM, that a quad would max out at 256. So I think the 3990x is the right comparison. And if the quad M1 Max were out today, I suspect it would be very competitive against the 3990x. But alas, it sounds like we won't get it until the end of the year.
Apple has the better core design. Their unified (CPU+GPU) memory architecture gives them a unique advantage with some important workloads. Apple is also first in line at TSMC for new processes. But if the Mac Pro version of each M# series chips lags two years (!!) behind the regular M# chip, then Apple will fail to realize its full potential at the high end. Yes, they'll be competitive, especially for some workloads. But they will not be "legendary." The shame of it, at least from my point of view, is that they really *could* be legendary at the high-end if they made the effort.
Hopefully this delay is mostly about COVID and needing to prioritize the big volume laptop business. Hopefully int he future the lag from M# to quad M# Max will be much shorter. But let's not pretend that the current situation is any different than it is.
But Intel doesn't represent the best of what x86 has to offer. AMD's Threadripper is the current x86 king of the workstation market. If Intel is ever able to get Sapphire Rapids out the door, then maybe Intel can recapture the x86 lead, but that's both a big 'if' and a big 'maybe.'
I'd love it if Apple kicked x86 to the curb completely, but only if they realize the full potential of Apple Silicon.
But if Apple decides it's not worth it to completely replace x86 and wants to retain an x86 Mac Pro for the tippy top of the lineup, then I hope they move to use the best x86 solution available, rather than relying exclusively on Intel.
I think it’s exciting this leaker also says iMac Pro at the same time. That won’t be the same as the 27-inch iMac XDR that is rumored for this Spring.
The SFF Apple Mac Pro (G4 Cube sized) with M1 Mac Duo/Quad will be competitive to 64 core Threadrippers, imo. It will be the usual, it wins some, it loses some benchmarks. Intel and AMD have SMT, so any massively parallel apps that have low CPU loads per thread will be dominated by AMD. Cinebench really shows this behavior. For apps that high CPU loads per thread, I wouldn't be surprised if Apples 32 p-cores outperform a 64c TR, especially Apple feeds their cores with memory bandwidth. A M1 Max Quad could have over 1 TB/s of memory bandwidth.
Apple is going to rerun their playbook here though. The x86 workstations are going to be designed for 300 W CPUs and multiple 400 W GPUs. Apple's Mac Pro is going to be around 120 W for CPU and 240 W for GPU. They are going to say look at how small and efficient their workstation is compared to the big x86 workstations. Hard to believe that the 3rd time is going to be the charm here.
People understand concept of modern CPU and lower power consumption, but limiting hardware just because "you do not need it" is an arrogance when it comes to power workstations and servers and power users.
Maybe unnecessary to go after the 3990X. It has no real successor, the one for the workstation variant is still delayed. These flagship SKUs are a show product rather than being something practical. I think either A. they'll wait for the rest to catch up or B. remains a niche for years to come.
One thing for sure, we don’t need that much raw CPU power as we used to, the workstation landscape is changing, acceleration will offload works and will do than a big, big CPU alone could ever do. There'll be a distinction between server and workstation CPUs.
The M1 Max has 8 performance cores, 2 efficiency cores and 32 graphics cores (plus media ASICs). 8+2+32 in shorthand. 2 of them means 16+4+64. 4 of them means 32+8+128. 128 graphics cores will be about 40 TFLOPs of single precision compute, about what a Nvidia 3090 yields. 32 performance CPU cores will be anything from a 20 to 64 core x86 chip depending on type of operation. They may have a variants using M1 Pro chips too.
Apple Silicon CPUs are about 70% faster per cycle than x86 cores (3.2 GHz ~= 5 GHz Intel). Since most of the high core count x86 CPUs clock their CPUs cores at 2 to 3 GHz depending on core count for sustained loads, Apple's 32 p-core CPU could performe like a 64 core x86 CPU. It will all depend on app design with all these core counts. A lot of apps are using GPU compute or ML/inference algorithms, making it even more dependent on app design. Memory capacity is up in the air a bit. The above capacities are based on the M1 Max and doing a 2x and 4x. They can stack RAM 2 to 4 layers high and double and quadruple up from there.
Yes, I agree with you on the last comment. Apple needs to stuff as many chips as possible into a 1500 W workstation. Don't leave that off the table.
Whether that’ll change public opinion, most likely not.
No chip is equal, in this case ASI’s bottleneck may not be power consumption, you might as well dream about a supercomputer then.