Apple announces M1 Pro & M1 Max, two new custom-built silicon to power the next generation of Macs

Apple transitioned its Mac computers away from Intel to its own chips last year with its M1 chip. Today, the company announced the M1 Pro and ‌M1‌ Max processors, two custom-built chips to power the next generation of MacBooks and beyond. Both chips are essentially souped-up versions of Apple’s first in-house chip. As a new addition to the M1 family, the new M1 Pro and the M1 Max chips pack more punch to power more devices in Apple’s Mac portfolio.

Both the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips will be first seen inside the new MacBook Pro models that were launched alongside the new AirPods 3 today. Let’s quickly go through all the important specifications to see what kind of performance improvements you can expect from these new chips.

Apple M1 Pro

The Apple M1 Pro is a 5nm chip that features a total of up to 10 CPU cores. Eight of those 10 CPU cores are high-performance cores while two are high-efficiency cores. Additionally, the M1 Pro also features up to 16 GPU cores with 2,048 execution units. This is a notable improvement over the original M1 which had 8 GPU cores in total. In typical Apple fashion, you can say the M1 Pro chip promises up to 70 percent better CPU performance and twice the GPU performance compared to the M1.

Much like the original M1 chip, the memory is still integrated directly into the chip itself. But the new chip supports more RAM, so you’re less likely to feel the need to upgrade in future. Apple is offering configurations up to 32GB with a total of 200GB/s bandwidth. The new M1 Pro packs in 33.7 billion transistors, more than two times the amount in M1. While comparing it with the latest 8-core PC laptop chip, the M1 Pro delivers up to 1.7x more CPU performance while using up to 70 percent less power. The same is true for M1 Pro’s GPU cores, in which case Apple says they’re up to seven times faster than the integrated graphics on the latest 8-core PC laptop chips.

Apple M1 Max

In addition to M1 Pro, Apple also announced the more powerful M1 Max chip. It essentially builds on the M1 Pro to deliver more performance for high-end computing machines in Apple’s Mac portfolio. The M1 Max is the largest chip Apple has ever built and it features 57 billion transistors. It uses the same 10-core CPU as M1 Pro but adds a 32-core GPU instead of 16. According to Apple, it’ll have the same performance as discrete graphics.

This is a developing story!

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