New report reveals Apple’s roadmap for when each Mac will move to Apple Silicon

Citing sources near Apple, a new report in Bloomberg outlines Apple’s roadmap for shifting all the Mac lineup to the corporate’s personal custom-designed silicon, together with each deliberate launch home windows for particular merchandise and estimations as to what number of efficiency CPU cores these merchandise could have.

The M1, which has 4 efficiency cores (alongside 4 effectivity cores), launched this fall within the firm’s lowest-end computer systems—particularly, the MacBook Air and relatively low-cost variants of the Mac mini and 13-inch MacBook Professional. These machines have much less reminiscence and fewer ports than the corporate’s dearer gadgets. The Macs with extra reminiscence or ports, such because the 16-inch MacBook Professional, are nonetheless offered with Intel CPUs.

Based on the report’s sources, Apple plans to launch new Apple Silicon-based variations of the 16-inch MacBook Professional and the higher-end 13-inch MacBook Professional configurations in 2021, with the primary chips acceptable for at the very least a few of these computer systems arriving as early as spring, and sure all of them by fall. New iMac fashions that share CPU configurations with high-end MacBook Execs are additionally anticipated subsequent yr.

The Mac Professional, then again, wouldn’t arrive till 2022, which is the yr that Apple has stated it plans to finish its silicon transition. That implies the Mac Professional stands out as the final machine to make the leap.

New chips for the high-end MacBook Professional and iMac computer systems might have as many as 16 efficiency cores (the M1 has 4). And the deliberate Mac Professional substitute might have as many as 32. The report is cautious to make clear that Apple might, for one motive or one other, select to solely launch Macs with 8 or 12 cores at first however that the corporate is engaged on chip variants with the upper core rely, in any case.

The report reveals two different tidbits. First, a direct relative to the M1 will energy new iPad Professional fashions as a result of be launched subsequent yr, and second, the sooner M1 successors for the MacBook Professional and desktop computer systems may even function extra GPU cores for graphics processing—particularly, 16 or 32 cores. Additional, Apple is engaged on “pricier graphics upgrades with 64 and 128 devoted cores geared toward its highest-end machines” for 2022 or late 2021.

When Ars reviewed the M1 Mac mini and MacBook Air, we discovered that efficiency handily bested counterpart Macs with Intel chips.

Apple says it has achieved these efficiency enhancements partially due to a newly refined unified reminiscence structure that enables the CPU, GPU, and different elements to rapidly entry information in the identical shared pool of quick reminiscence with out shedding effectivity to shifting or copying the information round.

Once we interviewed Apple executives Craig Federighi, Greg Joswiak, and Johny Srouji, they claimed that the M1 is barely the start of the efficiency leap for Macs primarily based on this structure.

They pointed to the above chart and indicated that whereas the M1 within the MacBook Air sits on the 10W line on that chart, the efficiency line continues to scale upward. Up that scale is the place subsequent yr’s new chips might fall.

When Apple first introduced its {custom} silicon shift at its developer convention earlier this yr, it stated it expects to finish the transition from Intel inside two years—which inserts with the timeline this Bloomberg report has laid out. Nonetheless, it is necessary to notice that delays and adjustments to the designs of those chips are all the time a risk when wanting as far out as 2022.

Itemizing picture by Lee Hutchinson