Apple's current generation 2019 Mac Pro retails at £5,499 or $5,999 up to £47,079 or $52,199. This powerful device houses the 28-core Intel Xeon W. However, a new report claims that future Apple Mac Pro could replace the Intel Xeon processor with ARM processors.
ARM-based Mac Pro Possible
The latest news comes from former Apple executive Jean-Louis Gassée on Monday Note. He speculates on the technical possibility of an ARM-powered Mac Pro. The former Apple executive believes that it is possible that the processor of the Cupertino tech giant could compete with the Xeon chips from Intel and could even consume less power.
Last year, the Apple executive noted that upon careful consideration of the arguments provided by both sides, ruled out the possibility of Mac Pro switching to ARM-based chips was not practical. One of the possible reasons why Gassee did not consider the switch could because he did not believe that ARM-based processors could be powerful enough for Apple's Mac Pro. But, he admitted he was wrong and shared some insights about the subject.
He says in the blog post that "Ampere top of the line chips consume less power, about 210 watts, than a competing Xeon CPU needing as much as 400 wats, for about the same amount of computing power - hence investors' interest in a device that could progressively supplant Intel products in tens of millions of servers around the world. Ampere shows us that the ARM architecture can yield the class of chips a Mac Pro would need. And, as it happens, the chips are manufactured by TSMC, the same company that makes Apple's Axx processors."
But, the former Apple executive says that the change would not happen overnight. He notes that "If (or, more likely, when) the Mac switches to Axx chips, the change won't be instantaneous. Some Macs will become powered by Apple's home-grown CPU chips, others, like the Mac Pro, will remain on x86 processors. And thus we'll have a fork of macOS."
A-Series Chips
TFI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier predicted that the Cupertino tech juggernaut is developing ARM-powered Mac. Kuo claimed that this device could arrive to consumers as early as 2021. The rumored device might be based on Apple's A14 Bionic chip, which, according to earlier rumors, would use 5nm FinFET architecture.
It is worth noting that while these details are exciting, these are not official yet. In other words, it is wise to take this information with a good measure of salt.
