The new Mac Pro chip
According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the next Mac Pro is expected to incorporate chip options at least 2 or 4 times as powerful as the newly released M2 Max. Gurman said that this is the reason Apple is reportedly ramping up testing of the high-end computer in preparation for the computer’s anticipated release next year.
So what does this even mean? I DON’T EVEN KNOWWWWWWW…. just kidding; the news is interesting, to say the least.
We will quickly cover the limited information and briefly go over what to expect and the possible pricing. What we find really interesting is the curious case of Moore’s Law, where it is stated that
the principle that the speed and capability of computers can be expected to double every two years as a result of increases in the number of transistors a microchip can contain.
Moore’s Law
This then brings up the second of Moore’s Law, which we will go over at the end.
The new Mac Pro chip: what it is and what it does
The new chip options are going to be called M2 Ultra and the M2 Extreme… which kind of sounds like the chip naming guy might have had a couple of too many Monsters and just went on a crazy binge of watching WWF wrestling around the Attitude Era with Xpac telling him what to do. Or maybe it was BA Billy Gunn giving the advice. Either way, I am all for it. Who needs the GPU 2937201, when you can have the Extreme M2?!
The two options seem to be coming with 24 and 48 central processing units, respectively, along with 76 and 152 graphical processing unit cores; this contrasts with the base M2, which includes eight central processing units and ten graphic processing unit cores, and the rumored M2 Max that claims to encompass 12 central processing units and 38 graphical processing unit cores.
The new Mac Pro chip: benefits
Let’s be serious; at this time, the only benefit that we can really know how good these things are is to bench-test them once they are released. Generally speaking, when someone lets you know how Extreme the model will be, it usually lives up to the hype. Especially with Apple, as they don’t often talk about something that they aren’t sure about…
But at what cost?!
So this is the other thing that we don’t know about. But if we know about Apple, it is going to be expensive. The last time there was a release like this, apple charged around $6,000, was in 2019, with their Mac Pro. So if that type of trend continues, we will expect something around the price of $8-$9,000 if we just factor in inflation.
This is also why we made this blog because although you must be super up to date with the latest gadgets to be cool, we find value in old school tech. For example the amazing Adruino base and raspberry Pi pieces for DIY projects. You can get these to do amazing projects for very little cost. No they can’t render the metaverse with 190 different locations at the same time. How can you say that this isn’t a cool project:
Conclusion
So while this again makes little change to the world other than new chips, with more power, coming out at eye popping prices it actually bring up the second of Moore’s Law.
the cost of a semiconductor chip fabrication plant doubles every four years.
Moore’s Law
It is interesting that we expect that the power that the chips produce will continue to increase but forget about the cost that comes with it. It is like when you start working out. You are starting at a low baseline, so maybe you can lift 10 lbs. You work our for a while, then you can lift 40 lbs. That is a 4x increase. As you continue to work out it gets harder and harder because your baseline has increased. So it will be a lot harder to go from 40 lbs. to 160 lbs in the same amount of time.
So while our expectations continue to increase so do the prices to reach those levels of performance. So that pretty much ensures that all tech going forward will continue to cost more and more… or Moore if you will… We have already covered the latest Google Chip which was interesting to say the least, but again it is just about increasing the baseline that our expectations are now set to. So , like we said before maybe we need to taper our expectations on tech going forward or we might just end up living in simulations with people needing to take sleeping concoctions to sleep like in Inception.
