How Apple’s M1 Pro and Max chips aim to change the game

Apple has officially announced the M1 Pro and M1 Max, beefed-up versions of the M1 chip that debuted last fall and the heart of Apple's new MacBook Pro models.

Apple's first in-house, Arm-based chip for laptops, the M1, was announced a little more than a year ago. It debuted in Apple's redesigned MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, and entry-level Mac Mini, as well as the iMac and iPad Pro, refreshed for 2021.

However, as good as the M1 chip was, it was only intended to be a replacement for Intel on Apple's entry-to-mid-level hardware. The M1 Pro and M1 Max are Apple's long-awaited solutions to that problem: while they're both made on the same 5nm process, Apple promises significant performance improvements.

Apple claims that the M1 Pro will have 70 per cent better CPU performance and twice the graphics performance of the M1. While the basic architecture of the M1 Pro remains the same, Apple has significantly improved the hardware with a 10-core CPU with eight performance cores and two efficiency cores, as well as a 16-core GPU with 2,048 execution units.

M1 Pro also supports more RAM, with configuration options up to 32GB with 200GB/s memory bandwidth. The new chip has 33.7 billion transistors in total, which is twice as many as the M1.

The M1 Max, which has the same 10-core CPU configuration as the M1, but with eight performance cores and two efficiency cores, is even more powerful. The M1 Max, on the other hand, doubles the memory bandwidth (to 400GB/s), RAM (up to 64GB), and GPU (with 32 cores, 4,096 execution units and four times the GPU performance of the original M1). The M1 Max has 57 billion transistors, making it Apple's most powerful chip to date. You can also connect up to four external displays to a single device thanks to the new chip.

The original M1 had an eight-core CPU configuration, with four performance cores for more demanding tasks and four high-efficiency cores for longer battery life. Depending on the computer model, the M1 also had a seven-core or eight-core GPU and only 8GB or 16GB of RAM.

In comparison to the regular M1 and unspecified four-core and eight-core PC laptop chips, Apple claims that the new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips offer up to 1.7 times better CPU performance per watt.