Apple's 'M2' processor enters mass production for MacBook Pro

The second Apple Silicon processor has reportedly entered volume production, and will first appear in MacBook Pro models from the second half of 2021.

A new supply chain report is backing up previous claims that Apple has rescheduled new MacBook Pro manufacturing to the second half of 2021.

According to Nikkei Asia, also the source of the previous report, the "M2" processor entered mass production earlier in April. Unnamed people said to be familiar with the matter, told the publication that it is possible this means shipments could begin as early as July.

These sources also said that the new processor is intended to be used first in the MacBook Pro. However, as it has with the M1 processor, Apple is expected to later deploy it across more of its product range.

Stay on top of all Apple news right from your HomePod. Say, "Hey, Siri, play AppleInsider," and you'll get latest AppleInsider Podcast. Or ask your HomePod mini for "AppleInsider Daily" instead and you'll hear a fast update direct from our news team. And, if you're interested in Apple-centric home automation, say "Hey, Siri, play HomeKit Insider," and you'll be listening to our newest specialized podcast in moments.

291 Comments

mattinoz 2473 comments · 9 Years

About 3 years ago

Great fairly predictable what will be interesting is what direction M2 goes?

dk49 284 comments · 9 Years

mattinoz said:

Great fairly predictable what will be interesting is what direction M2 goes?

Eating the top Intels and AMDs for lunch!

cpsro 3236 comments · 14 Years

Looking forward to the lower prices from Apple not having to pay the Intel tax on chips and cooling systems.
Oh wait

dewme 5737 comments · 10 Years

If this follows Apple’s (and industry) patterns the second iteration will be a significant improvement over the first release.

First release products often incur one-time costs, startup hurdles, overhead, learning curve, and extra effort not solely related to the product itself.

The second release tends to be what the developers really wanted for the first release product to be but didn’t have enough time, budget, and benefit of knowledge to deliver.

The M1 is amazing but the M2 (or whatever they call it) is going to make at least one traditional cpu maker soil their pants.

Marvin 15335 comments · 18 Years

mattinoz said:

Great fairly predictable what will be interesting is what direction M2 goes?

The efficiency of the M chips is really high. The following site tested Rise of the Tomb Raider at 1080p, very high quality settings and it gets 40FPS. That performance is pretty standard but just 7 watts of power for the GPU, 7.5 watts of power for the CPU, 16.5 watts for the whole chip.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-tested/3

That gives them a huge amount of headroom. If they 2x the CPU and 4x the GPU, this will be a 40W chip and perform like an Nvidia 3060. That can go in a 16" MBP, run almost twice as fast as the highest end current Intel model while using half the power. That performance level would be around the mid-level iMac Pro and can be used for both the 16" MBP and 27" iMac.

This gives them a lot of control over inventory - MBA, 13" MBP, 24" iMac, mini and iPad Pro on the same M1 chip. 16" MBP and 27" iMac on the same M2 chip. Mac Pro either a custom high-end chip or just use multiples of the M2 e.g M2 Duo, M2 Quad. A higher end iMac model can use the higher end chips too.

For Mac Pro performance, they'd need another 2x CPU and 4x GPU but that's still under 200W and won't need anywhere near the cooling of the current model.

It's a shame it's for H2, hopefully they'll at least talk about it at WWDC in a few weeks like the M1 last year and ship sooner than the usual end of year Mac releases.

I think these models will start at 16GB memory, possibly DDR5 and go up to 64GB, 512GB SSD. If the Mac Pro uses up to 4 packages, it can go up to 256GB. I expect the entry prices to be close to where they are now although they would probably be able to drop $200-300. The highest end models can be much cheaper than they are now. Even if Apple charged $2k for the highest-end chips, that would be a huge markup over their manufacturing cost and still $5k cheaper than intel and they'd be offering iMac Pro performance at entry Pro model prices.