Apple still has one Intel-based product to transition to Apple silicon: the Mac Pro. We think that Apple may introduce it at WWDC in June along with the new M2 Ultra chip.
But it’s hard to imagine why you even need a Mac Pro with Apple Silicon other than Apple to save face. The market for what has always been a niche product has squeezed the Mac Studio market even further. There may be people expecting people to buy an Apple Silicon Mac Pro, but there are even fewer of those who bought an existing Mac Pro.
The latest rumors suggest that Mac Studio won’t get the expected upgrade – from the current M1 Max and M1 Ultra configurations to the M2 Max and M2 Ultra – at WWDC. In fact, Apple could ditch the M2 generation altogether, leaving the M2 Ultra as a Mac Pro-exclusive chip and the M2 Max as a MacBook Pro-only chip.
So why would Apple wait for M3 to update Mac Studio? Probably because there is little to distinguish it from the Mac Pro. And that makes sense, but it begs the question: if Apple has to avoid updating Mac Studio to make the Mac Pro more attractive, why bother doing it at all?
Apple Silicon and upgradeability
The problem, if you can call it that, is Apple’s silicon. Apple’s fantastic M-series processors achieve such fantastic performance at relatively low power consumption in part because they are so tightly integrated. The CPU, GPU, Neural Engine, media encoders/decoders and other parts are all part of a single die, shared by the cache and interacting with each other at lightning speed. This is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) approach popularized in the mobile world to improve the power-to-performance ratio and make optimal use of very limited space.
By putting the system on a chip, all components are included. The memory is unified, that is, soldered on the same board or stacked on top of the chip, which provides an extremely wide and high-speed memory interface. The graphics processor is integrated. Even the storage sits next to the SoC with customizable interfaces and caches.
There’s no way to separate these things, but it’s a huge technical issue that will almost certainly result in performance degradation. Will Apple be able to get through all of these problems because of one extremely high-end Mac product that only sells a few thousand units a year at most?
In other words, you can expect the Apple Silicon Mac Pro version to possibly have upgradable storage, and that’s about it. You will not be able to replace the CPU, GPU, RAM, or any related parts such as the Neural Engine or video encoders. It’s possible the computer could be on a motherboard with PCIe slots for specialty cards needed for very specific industries, but the question is whether they’ll work on a non-Intel Mac and what work needs to be done to get them to play. entirely with Apple silicon architecture.
Apple
Just update Mac Studio and be done with it
There is no reason to think that the current configuration of Mac Studio does not support the M2 Ultra chip. Given the power consumption of the M2 Pro and M2 Max, they seem to be the same as the M1 Pro and M1 Max – thus the Mac Studio copper thermal module built for the M1 Ultra will require very little, if any, adjustment to be effective. chip.
The maximum configuration for the M2 Ultra will have 192 GB of RAM, 8 TB SSD, HDMI 2.1 and six Thunderbolt 4 ports. Price of this configuration? The top-notch M1 Ultra Mac Studio with 128GB of RAM costs $7,999, so maybe $8,499. Please note that Mac Pro starts for $5,999, and getting 192GB of RAM and an 8GB SSD — no CPU or GPU upgrade — costs $11,399. If you want to get close to the performance of the M1 Ultra Mac Studio, you’ll need an upgrade costing around $20,000.
If we make the very reasonable assumption that the top performance M2 Ultra Mac Studio will cost less than $10,000 and the Apple Silicon Mac Pro will not have an upgradable CPU, GPU, or RAM, then what is Apple going to do? Charge an extra 10 grand just for the big case?
And who will it be for? If Apple found a way to offer some crazy M2 Ultra configuration with much more RAM and storage, the only customers who would rather pay thousands of dollars more would be those who really see the real benefit of having more than 192GB of RAM and 8 TB of storage.
Of course, such customers exist, but they cannot be enough to justify the entire product line. Even before Mac Studio, the Mac Pro offered a clear and significant step up from the rest of the Mac lineup. Yes, the market was small, but it was the only way to go if you wanted the ultimate Mac performance. With Mac Studio and the whole tight-integration architecture of Apple Silicon preventing updates, it’s probably best for Apple to ditch the Mac Pro for good.