Mark Gurman, one of Apple’s main sources of rumors due to his reliability and expertise, has commented on what he says would be the next step in Apple’s transition from Intel to its own chips after the arrival of the M1 to MacBook Airs. , MacBook Pro and Mac mini. That next step would aim to improve performance and efficiency on Intel’s most powerful chips.
That would be achieved with a new chip more powerful than the M1 (or a modified version of it) that would be equipped as of next spring in iMac, high-end MacBook Pros and finally in Mac Pros. There would still be time until Apple completes the transition in 2022 as promised, but with this we would have the entire Mac range with its own chips by autumn 2021.
32-core CPUs and 128-core GPUs in 2022: Apple has ambition to lead with its chips
At the moment the analysis and criticism of the M1 chips are generally positive, emphasizing the increase in performance of these Macs despite being less powerful or even lacking ventilation in the case of MacBook Air. So looking ahead, if in a few months Apple proves that this M1 is the entry chip towards something more pntente, that goal of surpassing the power of Intel can be achieved. There is optimism and expectation about how Apple can “resuscitate” Macs with this transition: my colleague Javier Pastor has already given his arguments to wait and not buy any Mac for now.
There is not too much hard data about what these older brothers of the M1 chip could look like, although Gurman mentions that we could see them with up to 32 cores. Considering that the four efficiency cores would be kept as the base in all models, that would mean that we would see chips with 8, 12 and up to 28 performance cores. Chips with that many cores would be reserved for the most demanding Macs, including a Mac Pro whose size would be cut in half.
In terms of graphics power, Mark Gurman says Apple is planning to integrate 16- and up to 32-core GPUs for mid- and high-end Macs. And for those Mac Pro we could see GPUs with up to 128 dedicated cores. That, I insist, would be a reality in a period of about two years.
Apple has declined to comment on the Bloomberg news. Remember that we are talking about rumors, so we should not take this as confirmed news, much less official.