M1 Pro and M1 Max: The new generation chips by Apple

While the world was waiting for an M1X announcement at Apple's October event, Tim Cook and his team took everyone by surprise and announced two different new upgrades to their unanimously praised M1. 

The new M1 Pro and M1 Max, despite being a scaled-up version of its predecessor, add a lot more than the two additional cores. 

The jump from 8-core M1 to 10-core M1 Pro and M1 Max may seem insignificant, but there is more than what meets the eye. 

Specifications at a glance: 
Total CPU Core: 8, 8 and 10, 10
Total Performance Cores: 4, 6 and 8, 8
Total Efficiency Cores: 4, 2, 2 
Total GPU Cores: 7 and 8, 14 and 16, 24 and 32
Neural Engines: 16, 16, 16
Max Memory Bandwidth: N/A, 200 GB/s, 400 GB/s
Maximum memory supported (UMA): 16GB, 32GB, 64GB

While M1 had 8 CPU cores, only four of them were performance cores. The other four cores were just efficiency cores for more trivial work like web browsing. 

However, in the new chips, six of the 8-core M1 Pro CPU and eight of the 10-core M1 Pro and M1 Max CPU are performance cores, leaving only two efficiency cores. 

The decrease in efficiency core for more menial tasks actually works in favour of the users as the increase in CPU performance core means new Pro and Max can now handle more power-heavy tasks. 

That was just the CPU upgrade. What about the GPU side of things? 

Well, the GPU story is even more exciting as the M1's maxed eight cores increased up to 16 cores for M1 Pro and 32 cores for M1 Max. 

This huge jump in the GPU cores even left $6,000 worth AMD Radeon Pro W6900X behind in the Affinity benchmark, leaving testers flabbergasted. 

The next big jump comes in the form of memory bandwidth. M1 Pro is now capable of 200 GB/s transfer while M1 Max hit a whooping 400 GB/s mark, benefiting the unified memory structure of M1 upgrades. 

The maximum memory supported (UMA) has also increased to 32 GB for M1 Pro and 64 GB for M1 Max from M1's maxed 16 GB. 

One thing that did not increase is the neural engines. Both Pro and Max, like their predecessor, have 16 Neural Engines. 

Although, due to the unified memory structure and more capable CPU cores, both SoCs are much better in neural engine-driven tasks like voice recognition, machine learning, image processing and video hardware accelerating compared to the M1s. 

As for the comparison to Intel and AMD chips, the benchmarks are yet to come. But from the specs and how M1 performed, testers are comparing it with 16-Core Intel 11th Gen i7-11700K while the AMD equivalent would be the 16-core AMD Ryzen 7 5800X. 

However, the CPU and GPU cores are both integrated into one chip and draw from the unified memory structure in these M1 upgrades, while for PCs, a dedicated GPU unit is required and does not have a unified memory benefit. 

So, the single-core and multi-core performance are more likely to surpass most of the Intel and AMD counterparts. 

But the actual benchmark comparisons will be available when these two new chips debut with the new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro lineup at the end of October.