Apple has also recently scrapped plans for a high-performance Mac chip made up of four smaller chips sewn together. According to a report from The Information, the decision is intended to shift the engineering resources toward an AI server chip the company wants to make. This chip seems like it was a component of Apple’s former Mac “Extreme” chip plans, which may have been a rehash of a concept that had been devised in a previous generation. The chip was rumored to be an “M2 Extreme” but now looks to be replaced by an equally unlikely “M4 Extreme.”
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Apple Cancels ‘M4 Extreme’ Chip Development, Delays High-Performance Mac Processor
The “M4 Extreme” was most likely designed for the higher-end Mac Pro tower and would have been marketed as a more capable version of the anticipated M4 Ultra chip, which is expected to be introduced in new Mac Studio and Mac Pro models next year. “The M4 Extreme,” if it had been realized, would have essentially been the M4 Max chip — which recently appeared on the MacBook Pro — quadrupled.
The chip would have had a powerhouse set of specs, potentially maxing out at a 64-core CPU and a 160-core GPU, targeting professional users. While the “M4 Extreme” has been shelved for the time being, Apple has signaled passive interest in making such a piece of silicon in the past. This suggests that while the current iteration may be canceled, a similar chip could emerge in the future as part of the M5 series or beyond.
As John Gruber of Daring Fireball notably emphasizes, Apple can take years from the time it first designs a new chip to the time it becomes commercially available, so there’s a chance the canceled chip was a kind of “M5 Extreme” — or even something potentially more advanced — depending on when the development process was halted. For now, the fate of the high-performance chip is not clear.
