Apple's new M1 Max SoC: up to 10-core CPU, 32-core GPU, on 5nm

Apple has just unveiled their new MacBook Pro laptops and alongside the new MacBook Pro we have new M1 Max and M1 Pro SoCs inside of them.

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The new Apple M1 Max is the company's new flagship SoC, with both the new M1 Max and M1 Pro SoC featuring a totally new CPU and GPU architecture, all made on TSMC's latest 5nm process node. Apple's new M1 Max and M1 Pro feature a new chip architecture, packing up to 10 CPU cores (8 of them are high-performance cores, with an ultra-wide execution architecture, the other 2 are high-efficiency cores based on a wide execution architecture).

Apple is cramming an impressive 57 billion transistors onto the flagship Apple M1 Max SoC, while the Apple M1 Pro SoC has 33.7 billion transistors.

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Both are made on TSMC 5nm, but the flagship M1 Max is a beast: it packs a hefty 32-core GPU with 4096 execution units, and 10.4 TFLOPs of compute performance. We have 327 gigatexels/sec and 164 gigapixels/sec with the M1 Max SoC.

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In comparison, Apple's new M1 Pro has a 16-core GPU with 2048 execution units, and 5.2 TFLOPs of compute power. The M1 Pro has up to 164 gigatexels/sec and up to 82 gigapixels/sec.

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Apple's new flagship M1 Max SoC has 57 billion transistors, a 10-core CPU, up to 32-core GPU, 400GB/sec of memory bandwidth -- and up to 64GB of RAM at that -- support for not 1, or 2, but 4 external displays, industry-leading performance-per-watt, Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, and TSMC's fresh new 5nm process node.

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The slightly lower-end M1 Pro SoC has 33.7 billion transistors, up to a 10-core CPU, up to 16-core GPU, 200GB/sec of memory bandwidth -- and up to 32GB of RAM -- support for 2 external displays, the same industry-leading performance-per-watt, Thunderbolt 4 connectivity, and the same 5nm process node from TSMC.

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Apple is always a bit of a weirdo when it comes to performance and benchmark charts, where the new M1 Max and M1 Pro get teased for their performance chops -- but we really don't know how it'll perform in the real-world. Still, we should expect impressive things: Apple claims the new M1 Max and M1 Pro have up to 70% more performance over the M1 SoC.

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Not only that, but the new M1 Max and M1 Pro is faster than an 8-core laptop CPU and uses just 30W in comparison... a regular 4-core x86 processor uses around 40W, while an 8-core processor would use around 60W of power. Impressive stuff here so far, Apple.

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Apple's new 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Max SoC is an insane 13x faster in GPU performance than the Core i7-powered previous-gen 13-inch MacBook Pro. The M1 Pro-powered 14-inch MacBook Pro packs 9x faster GPU performance over the previous-gen 13-inch MBP.

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CPU performance is up 3.7x in the new Apple M1 Max and M1 Pro powered MacBook Pro laptops, a big upgrade over the Core i7 processor in the 13-inch previous-gen MacBook Pro. We also can't leave out the machine learning side of things, with up to 5x more performance over the Core i9-powered 16-inch MacBook Pro.

Apple will be rolling out its next-gen 2021 MacBook Pro laptops over the coming weeks and months.