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Apple unveiled its M1 Pro and M1 Max chips with up to 57 billion transistors for the new MacBook Pro laptops.
In an online event, Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives touted the new processors as the heart of the company’s three new models of MacBook Pro laptpos.
The new M1 Pro processor has 33.7 billion transistors and a memory bandwidth of 200GB/second. It has 10 central processing unit (CPU) cores, including eight high-performance cores. And it has 16 graphics processing unit (GPU) cores and is built in a five-nanometer manufacturing process. It is 70% faster than the M1 with twice the transistors, said Apple executive Johnny Srouji. It can support two external displays.
Above: Apple says that M1 Max has 3.5 times the transistor count of rival chips.
The M1 Max, meanwhile, is Apple’s biggest processor ever with 57 billion transistors. It has 400GB/second memory bandwidth, 64GB of unified memory, a 10-core CPU and 32-core GPU. It can support up to four external displays. M1 Max is 2.5 times faster than rival laptop graphics on battery power, Apple said.
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“These new chips are phenomenal,” said Craig Federighi, an executive at Apple, during the event
Above: Apple M1 Pro details.
It enables instant-wake from sleep mode. Machine learning calculations can perform three times to 20 times faster on applications, he said. And it has up to 70% less power consumption than rival chips.
It has hardware-verified secure boot, runtime anti-exploitation, and fast in-line encryption for better security, Federighi said. Cinema 4D is three times faster on the latest chips. And it means better games are going to run on the latest Apple hardware.
The new MacBook Pro comes in 14-inch and 16-inch models. The 14.2-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,000 and the 16-inch MacBook Pro starts at $2,500.
The design of the MacBook Pro has thinner bezels. The mini-LED display has more pixels with 1,600 nits of peak brightness. It can run at 120Hz with ProMotion technology. The MacBook Pro now also has a HDMI port, SD card reader, and MagSafe for magnetic charging.
All of that silicon will enable users to edit 8K video on battery power, Apple said. And Apple is touting two times to four times better battery life.
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