Mac Pro: plans for the superchip buried again?

It was a new product launch that fell short of high expectations: when Apple launched a new Mac Pro in June 2023, which contained its own Apple Silicon chips for the first time, dreams of a new computer design and, above all, a special version of the Apple chips that would have put even the M2 Ultra of the time in the shade, fizzled out. Rumor mongers soon issued the motto "wait and see" – Apple had merely postponed its plans. However, a media report that has now been published casts doubt on whether the Mac Pro will have its own chip next year or later.

Apple pulled chip engineers in Israel away from developing a four-chip M-series processor this summer so they could work on an AI chip for Apple's data centers, according to a report from The Information, citing two unnamed sources. According to experts, this particular M chip, which has been abandoned, could actually just be a superchip intended for future Mac Pro models.

An M4 Extreme is not ruled out

The M2 Ultra is the current top processor – Apple has never released an M3 Ultra – consists of two M2 Max chips that are connected to each other via Apple's UltraFusion interconnect. A quad chip would therefore be a future variant of the Ultra – However, it is more likely that it is the legendary Extreme variant that was already expected in the M2 generation with the Mac Pro.

The fact that Apple has postponed this Extreme variant will undoubtedly influence the top model for the highest demands, the Mac Pro, in the future. However, if Apple already had plans for a Mac Pro in 2025, it could still appear with an M4 Extreme, according to Apple blogger John Gruber, among others. He argues that the report from The Information cannot be referring to an Extreme chip for 2025 if it was only canceled in the summer, as Apple's development cycles are much longer. An M4 Extreme would have long since been completed in development. The report also stated that TSMC's N3P process would be used to manufacture the chip. However, the M4 generation is manufactured using the previous N3E process.

The rejection now reported could therefore relate more to the successor to an M4 Extreme and would therefore open up a larger time gap to a successor. Or there is no M4 Extreme – at all, in which case this variant would be completely out of the question, which would also make it unclear how the Mac Pro would differ from the more compact Mac Studio apart from the greater flexibility provided by PCIe slots. Both computers are currently offered with an M2 Ultra.

Other priorities in Cupertino

In addition to the new focus on AI, Apple's change in priorities could of course also be related to the fact that Cupertino does not see a significantly large target group for an Extreme chip. The current M4 Max already covers the needs of many professional users from – and does so even more extensively than the first Apple Silicon generations. An M4 Ultra , which is expected in the second half of 2025, would take this even further. An M4 Extreme would therefore serve a very small niche and would benefit Apple primarily for reasons of prestige. However, Apple is currently looking for this prestige in Apple Intelligence, especially on the server side, where the customized concept of private cloud compute is not only fast, but is also supposed to guarantee data protection in particular compared to competitors.

(mki)