Apple announces M1 Pro and M1 Max processors
announced Apple has officially announced its most powerful M1 Pro and M1 Max processors, two improved versions of the M1 processor that debuted last fall and on new MacBook Pro models.
The original M1 chip was announced just under a year ago as Apple’s first internal chip based on the Arm architecture for laptops.
At launch, the M1 chip was featured in the revamped MacBook Air, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and Mac mini, as well as the 20201 iMac and iPad Pro updates.
Despite the quality of the M1 chip. But it was a solution to replace the Intel processors found in the main Apple devices. While the high-end MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac models (intended for developers, programmers, graphic designers, and other more demanding workloads) have all been powered by Intel processors for the past year.
The M1 Pro and M1 Max are the company’s long-awaited response to the problem, and while they’re both built on the same 5nm manufacturing process, the company promises major leaps in performance.
For the M1 Pro, the company promises 70 percent better CPU performance and twice the graphics performance compared to the M1.
While the basic architecture remains the same on the M1 Pro. But the company is raising the bar significantly, with a 10-core CPU that delivers eight performance cores and two efficiency cores, along with a 16-core GPU with 2,048 execution units.
The new chip also supports more RAM, with options up to 32GB (though the memory is still built directly into the chip itself) with a memory bandwidth of 200GB/s.
In total, the M1 Pro processor contains 33.7 billion transistors, nearly twice as many as the M1.
M1 Pro and M1 Max are the most powerful processors made by Apple
The company also announced the more powerful M1 Max processor, which has the same 10-core CPU setup, with eight performance cores and two efficiency cores. But the M1 Max doubles memory bandwidth up to 400GB per second, RAM up to 64GB, GPU with 32 cores, 4,096 executables and quadruples the GPU performance of the original M1.
The M1 Max features 57 billion transistors, making it the largest chip Apple has made to date. The new chip also means you can connect up to four external monitors to a single device.
For comparison, the M1 provided eight CPU cores, four for the most demanding tasks and four highly efficient cores for extended battery life.
The M1 also offered either a seven- or eight-core GPU, depending on the model. It allowed either 8GB or 16GB of RAM.
The company also promised that the new M1 Pro and M1 Max chipsets deliver up to 1.7 times better CPU performance per watt than both the regular M1.
