Apple may build a new Mac Pro based on the M2 Ultra
According to the well-known whistleblower Mark Gurman, considering the cost and difficulty of production, Apple’s new Mac Pro may not be based on the rumored M2 Extreme, but the M2 Ultra.
Obviously, Apple’s expected 2-year platform conversion plan has not been implemented very smoothly. Although M-series chips can be said to be ubiquitous from notebooks to desktops, it is clear that there is still a missing piece on the Mac map, which is the Mac Pro, which represents the highest performance and high scalability.
Originally, Apple planned to prepare two chips for the new Mac Pro, one of which was equivalent to two M1 Max in performance, and the other was equivalent to four M1 Max. Later, the former was carried on the Mac Studio, named M1 Ultra. At the same time, Apple decided to delay the release of the Mac Pro a little bit, so that it could catch up with the M2 generation.
The M2 supplied to the Mac Pro is also divided into two pieces: M2 Ultra, 24 CPU cores, and 76 GPU cores; M2 Extreme has 48 CPU cores and 152 GPU cores, double that of Ultra.
But even with the packaging architecture of UltraFusion, due to cost and production difficulty considerations, Apple decided to give up the idea of combining four M1 Max. Furthermore, the price of the Mac Studio using the M1 Ultra is already high enough. If it is the M2 Extreme version of the Mac Pro, the price will start at least $10,000, which may not be accepted by many users. Therefore, Apple will still build a new generation of Mac Pro based on M2 Ultra, which may be a relatively friendly solution for Apple, TSMC, and consumers.
At the same time, Mark Gurman also revealed that Apple is also developing and producing a new generation of displays, positioned as an upgraded version of Pro Display XDR, just like the 2019 Mac Pro, escorting the new Mac Pro equipped with M-series chips.
