There’s currently very little reason to buy a Mac Pro over a Mac Studio configured with the M2 Ultra chip. That’s because Apple reportedly canceled plans for an M2 Extreme chip for the top-of-the-line Mac.
A new report suggests that history may be about to repeat itself, and that a planned Extreme chip for a future Mac Pro model may also now be in doubt. In the worst case, that could be no true new Mac Pro for years to come …
The current Mac Pro doesn’t have an Extreme chip
It’s believed that Apple originally planned the current Mac Pro to have an M2 Extreme chip, effectively doubling up on the power of the M2 Ultra. Bloomberg reported this plan back in 2022, before later reporting that the chip had been canceled due to complexity and cost concerns.
That left the current Mac Pro in a rather embarrassing position of having exactly the same M2 Ultra chip as the higher-end Mac Studio:
Yes, the Mac Pro has a far larger casing with better ventilation that could theoretically reduce thermal throttling, but tests suggest that isn’t the case in real-life use. That leaves PCIe slots as the sole advantage of the much pricier machine, and that really only makes things neater if you want to add Thunderbolt storage devices.
Another Extreme chip has been canceled
In The Information’s reporting on a partnership between Apple and Broadcom for a new AI server chip, Daring Fireball quoted an interesting element:
Apple’s silicon design team in Israel is leading development of the AI chip, according to two of the people. That team was instrumental in designing the processors Apple introduced in 2020 to replace Intel chips in Macs.
Apple this past summer canceled the development of a high-performance chip for Macs — consisting of four smaller chips stitched together — to free up some of its engineers in Israel to work on the AI chip, one of the people said, highlighting the company’s shifting priorities.
In other words, Apple has canceled another M-something Extreme chip. But which one?
Some have suggested the report means Apple canceled an M4 Extreme chip for a 2025 Mac Pro, but as Gruber notes, that doesn’t make sense.
But if Apple’s work on that quad-interposed M-series chip was cancelled only “this past summer”, and was for a generation of chips using TSMC’s next-generation N3P process, that would mean it was slated for the M5 or M6 generation, not the M4.2 The M4 generation is fabbed using TSMC’s N3E process, and any additional variants beyond the M4 Max, slated for updated Mac Studios and Mac Pros next year, were designed long before this past summer.
So yesterday’s report doesn’t tell us anything about whether a 2025 Mac Pro will get an M4 Extreme chip. Either that has already been developed and will launch in the new machine, or the reasons Apple decided against an M2 Extreme chip still apply, and it won’t. Either way, that decision has already been made.
What it does point to, however, is a future gap – the cancelation of an M5 Extreme
However, cancelled development on a future Extreme chip does mean that there won’t be an M5 version, and perhaps not an M6 one either.
The worst-case scenario
If the M4 Extreme chip is already in the works, then things aren’t too bad for those hoping to buy a new Mac Pro. They can upgrade to a 2025 Mac Pro with the M4 Extreme, then there’ll be no true update in 2025, and perhaps not in 2026.
That would already be problematic for the most well-heeled buyers – movie studios and the like who upgrade every year because money is no object. But for others, a Mac Pro is a machine they keep for several years.
But if Apple already canceled the M4 Extreme for the same reasons it ditched the M2 Extreme, that potentially means no real Mac Pro upgrade until 2026 or 2027. That would be a very long time to wait.
Photo: Apple
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