The Mac Studio, unveiled at Apple’s launch event that ended this week, suggests that the 2022 Mac Pro is still planned, and we can expect a more powerful processor than the M1 Ultra as part of its interior.
The first evidence of a more powerful chip has surfaced online, revealing that an upcoming workstation could use two of these M1 Ultras, forming a single but incredibly powerful solution.
Combining two M1 Ultra chipsets could mean the 2022 Mac Pro could be equipped with up to 40 cores and more graphics performance.
On Twitter, Majin Bu posted an image showing that, like the M1 Ultra, it will have an UltraFusion bridge unit to help connect the two M1 Ultra chipsets to form a single custom processor. As for what its official name will be, we haven’t found out those details, although the unnamed chip is codenamed, Redfern.
The newly announced M1 Ultra uses a combination of two M1 Max chipsets, with a whopping 114 billion transistors, as well as up to a 20-core CPU and 64-core GPU. Using the same process and bridging technology, it is possible to use two M1 Ultra chips to form a new chipset, conceivably a 40-core CPU and 128-core GPU.
Based on what my resource reports, here is some official information on the new Mac Pro 2022
This is the bridge that connects 2 M1 Ultra together and will be found in the new 2022 Mac Pro.
Processor name: “Redfern”
Coming with new Macs Pro this September #Apple #AppleInternal pic.twitter.com/afj0dSmQvk— Majin Bu (@MajinBuOfficial) March 12, 2022
In fact, according to a previous prediction by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple ‘s Mac Pro will feature an unnamed chipset with exact specifications. Assuming that happens, it’s not hard to expect groundbreaking single- and multi-core benchmark results, as well as power efficiency metrics never seen before on chips delivering these levels of performance.
Previous benchmark results have shown the M1 Ultra to be only a fraction slower than a 64-core workstation CPU, so we can only imagine what the two M1 Ultra parts can achieve when “fused” together. With this UltraFusion process, we’re guessing the total unified memory support will increase to 256GB, as memory is currently limited to 128GB on the M1 Ultra. Additionally, memory bandwidth has the potential to increase to 1.6TB/s compared to just 800GB/s on Apple’s fastest chipset.
The process of merging the two M1 Ultra chipsets will naturally increase their die size as well. A single M1 Ultra is 8 times larger than the M1 and has 7 times the number of transistors. Assuming the new SoC retains the exact same specs as the two M1 Ultra chips, the final chip could be 16 times larger than the M1 while boasting 288 billion transistor counts, or 14 times the M1’s transistor count.
The 2022 Mac Pro lineup is expected to start showing off in September of this year.