Apple has reportedly scrapped a high-powered, double-M2 Ultra chip for the Mac Pro.

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman(Opens in a new window), the chip—which he calls the M2 Extreme—was shelved because of the complexity and cost of producing it.

When it announced the shift to Apple-made silicon in 2020, the company said it wanted to complete the transition within two years. But as Gurman notes, it's behind schedule now, with no Mac Pro running Apple silicon and the high-end Mac mini still using Intel chips.

Apple offers an M1 Ultra version of its Mac Studio; it earned a 4.5 Editors' Choice award from PCMag for its "truly impressive processing and graphics," despite a $4,000 starting price. But according to Gurman, Apple decided to wait for the M2 to launch a new Mac Pro, and it "planned for the Mac Pro to come in two configurations: an M2 Ultra version and a double-M2 Ultra"—the latter is the one Gurman has dubbed the M2 Extreme.

Alas, the M2 Extreme is not likely to see the light of day. Plans for the super-charged chip, which would've offered 48 CPU cores and 152 graphics cores, have been abandoned for now, reportedly to help Apple and its partner TSMC focus on "higher-volume machines."

That M2 Extreme would basically be "four M2 Max chips fused together," Gurman says, and a Mac Pro running the chip would cost at least $10,000, just to start—a tough sell for even the most avid Apple fans. Gurman adds that Apple is working on an iMac Pro with Apple silicon, but it has “suffered internal delays for similar reasons as the Mac Pro.”

Gurman also tipped new external monitors running Apple silicon, but they'll likely come after the launch of the Mac Pro.

By: DocMemory
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