What you need to know
- Apple is said to have new Apple silicon in the works for Macs that could launch next year.
- At least one new iMac, MacBook Pro, and Mac Pro are said to be in the offering.
- The rumored new chips might outperform Intel's high-end processors.
Apple is working on new, high-performance M1 successors that will be used in at least one new iMac, a MacBook Pro, and a new Mac Pro. That's according to a new report by Bloomberg. The new processors from Apple will reportedly outperform high-end chips from Intel.
Citing people familiar with Apple's plans but unwilling to be named, Bloomberg's report says that entry-level and high-end iMacs are coming as well as upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro. A revised version of Apple's workstation-class Mac Pro is also expected. Bloomberg states:
Apple's M1 chip was unveiled in a new entry-level MacBook Pro laptop, a refreshed Mac mini desktop and across the MacBook Air range. The company's next series of chips, planned for release as early as the spring and later in the fall, are destined to be placed across upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, both entry-level and high-end iMac desktops, and later a new Mac Pro workstation, the people said.
A 2021 launch is expected for all of these new machines, although some will have to wait until some time towards the end of the calendar year. It should be worth the wait though, with some machines set to ship with as many as 32 cores. Bloomerg outlines some reported plans:
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.
It isn't just the CPU that will be getting a core boost, either. Bloomberg says that Apple engineers are working to improve the GPU performance of Apple silicon by going as far as 32 GPU cores, too. Per Bloomberg:
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.
Seemingly just doubling and quadrupling numbers, the same report goes on to say that 2022 could even see 128-core chips coming out of Apple's chip teams.
Apple's M1 chips, found in the fanless MacBook Air among other entry-level devices, already give some very costly Macs a run for their money. In addition to pressuring Intel-based devices running macOS, Apple's new silicon places pressure on Windows 10 on ARM devices. Apple's offering appears to outperform Qualcomm's ARM-based PCs by a significant margin. Someone even managed to get Windows 10 on ARM onto an Apple M1 chip, which allegedly outperformed the operating system on the Surface Pro X.
If Apple's rumored chips outperform Intel's offerings in the high-end computing space, there's a chance that Apple-made processors would lead the chip race for phones, tablets, laptops, and desktops.
