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Apple will not offer an “Extreme” version of the M2 chip when it launches the Apple Silicon Mac Pro, but rather the M2 Ultra, as is now reported.
The Mac Pro is the last model in the entire Mac lineup not to be offered with an Apple Silicon chip. Rumors and speculation suggest that Apple is working on such a chip, which is expected to launch sometime in 2023, but it may not be as powerful as previously thought. It was speculated that the model would use an "M2 Extreme" chip, a doubling of the Ultra chip concept that combines two M2 Ultra chips into one piece of silicon. Theoretically, the chip could have offered 48 CPU cores and 152 GPU cores. However, that is unlikely to happen. As Mark Gurman notes in his "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg, reported, Apple is withdrawing from offering a Mac Pro with an Extreme chip inside due to production problems.
Does the new Apple Mac Pro use the M2 Ultra chip?
Due to the complexity of the chip and for cost reasons, production will not continue and the high-end variant of the Mac Pro will be canceled. Instead, the Mac Pro will use an M2 Ultra chip, which offers 24 CPU cores and 76 GPU cores, as well as support for up to 192 gigabytes of unified memory. The M2 Extreme may have been one reason for the relatively slow launch of a new Mac Pro. In July, Gurman said that Apple had an M1 Mac Pro ready but did not bring it to market in order to develop the more powerful M2 Extreme chip. Despite the lower potential processing power, Gurman expects Apple to continue to offer some level of expandability for the Mac Pro, including options to increase RAM, internal storage, and other components. (Photo by Unsplash / Nana Dua)
