Apple’s silicon transition is rolling right along with the launch of the M1 Ultra. So what’s coming next?
When Apple released the M1 chip at the end of 2020, we were blown away by the speed improvements over its Intel predecessors. A year later Apple did it again with the M1 Pro and M1 Max, and then in March 2022, Apple revealed the M1 Ultra, filling out the M1 chip lineup and dramatically altering our expectations for Apple’s roadmap. Here’s how the Apple silicon transition has gone so far—and where it’s going. Apple’s current M1 processor is based on the 5nm A14 chip that first arrived in the iPad Air (4th generation) and iPhone 12. It has four high-performance cores with 192 KB of L1 instruction cache and 128 KB of L1 data cache and shared 12 MB L2 cache and four energy-efficient cores with 128 KB of instruction cache,64 KB of L1 data cache, and shared 4 MB L2 cache. That makes a total of eight cores split evenly among power and efficiency leading to tremendous speed boosts over the prior models. The system-on-a-chip also has an eight-core GPU in most models (the entry-level MacBook Air and 24-inch iMac have a 7-core GPU) with 128 execution units and up to 24576 concurrent threads. Apple Memory has also changed. With the M1, the LP-DDR4 memory isn’t just soldered to the motherboard, it’s actually part of the chip itself. That means it’s faster and more efficient than before, but it’s also a bit more limited—you can only get 8GB or 16GB in an M1 Mac and there’s no way to upgrade it after purchase. (That won’t be a surprise for MacBook buyers but the same also applies to desktop models, though we’re not sure about the Mac Pro yet.) And finally, the chip has a 16-core Neural Engine, along with the Secure Enclave and USB4/Thunderbolt support. We started hearing about the development of an M1X chip earlier this year, but the rumors weren’t quite accurate. Apple is calling its next-gen processors the M1 Pro and M1 Max, and true to their names, they are a massive leap over the M1. Built using the same 5nm process as the M1, the M1 Pro and M1 Max bring a new 10-core CPU, including eight high-performance cores and two high-efficiency cores, that delivers speeds up to 70 percent faster than the M1. The M1 Pro offers up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth with support for up to 32GB of unified memory while the M1 Max delivers up to 400GB/s of memory bandwidth with support for up to 64GB of unified memory. On the graphics side, the M1 Pro has a 14-core or 16-core GPU that is up to 2x faster than M1, while the M1 Max adds a 32-core GPU options for up to 4x faster graphics performance than M1. According to Apple, the new M1 Max MacBook Pro can transcode ProRes video in Compressor up to 10x faster compared with the Intel 16-inch MacBook Pro.
