Apple surprise-launches new Mac Pro with Apple Silicon

1 year ago 75

At Apple’s WWDC 2023 event today (see our full coverage), the company surprised fans with a brand new, Apple Silicon-powered desktop and rack-mounted Mac Pro workstation. It’s the last of the Apple products transitioning away from Intel processors, and the new workstation is an absolute beast.

A beast of a workstation. Image Credit: Apple

Aimed at high-end professionals, the Mac Pro is powered by Apple’s brand new M2 Ultra processor. Packing a 24-core CPU and up to 76-core GPUs, the workstation is up to seven times faster than the starting lineup of the older Intel-based Mac Pro.

The new processor means that the computer has enormous RAM capacity, supporting up to 192 GB of unified memory – a significant uptick over the M1 Ultra processors. Apple claims that the system can be used to train AI models. That might be true, but it’s a bit silly: These models are typically trained by arrays of computers in the cloud, rather than on a desktop computer. Still; for video, 3D and high-end music studio applications, moar power is moar fun.

The new computer packs all the features you’d expect from a high-end computer, including eight Thunderbolt ports, and six fourth-generation PCIe slots. These may not make a lot of sense to most users, but for TV and live event production, expansion cards are crucial for ingesting and spitting out content at high speed.

Eight Thunderbolt fronts – six on the back and two on the top of the computer. Image credit: Apple

The starting price tag for the Apple Mac Pro is $6,999 – but expect it to be a lot more expensive once you’ve added all the bells and whistles you might want.