With announcement of their newest iMacs (and iPads) with the M1, Apple has worked to simplify and standard on the M1 on their low-end scaling the work. The R&D investment for the SoC spreading a large unit sale and besides the many similarities beyond the cores with a iPhone SoC.
I think the decision is made easier by a concentration of the Air, 2-port Pro and iMacs 21,5’’ on the base specs assuming that i7 Air or Pro Vega iMacs made a tiny minority on sales and wasn't very cash valuable. Instead the higher selling point is just focused on SSD/RAM, additional ports and features on iMac upgrades (and a upgrade from the Air to 2-port Pro basically) and accessories (on iPad).
On another hand, a Pro 16’’, iMac 27’’ and Mac Pro the custom configuration with beefier internal may be very valuable on cash and higher percentage of market compared to base.
Seeing the current models:
> on a 16’’, a upgrade to maximum GPU and a i9 is a 1100$ investment plus the almost certain upgrade to RAM at least
> on a iMac, a upgrade to maximum GPU and i9 cost you 1400$
> on a Mac Pro, the sky is the limit
Besides there are mixed professional uses so you can have a high necessity for the top-end CPU and low need for GPU and vice-versa, and amount of RAM with any configuration.
Now assuming Apple take their Firestorm and Icestorm cores and have a blank sheet for all the rest and they are coming from the Mac Pro customer needs and scaling it down to fit and make economical sense on the other high-end systems what technologies on hardware and software would make sense to spread around the whole field?
Things like other competitors do as chiplets, NVLink. Things that are showing on Apple patents as mixed memory systems. Software solutions as GPU rendering for Final Cut? More custom APIs for high performance apps? What custom hardware paths for acceleration the system should have or would custom made cards as Afterburner make sense for at least an iMac?
I think the decision is made easier by a concentration of the Air, 2-port Pro and iMacs 21,5’’ on the base specs assuming that i7 Air or Pro Vega iMacs made a tiny minority on sales and wasn't very cash valuable. Instead the higher selling point is just focused on SSD/RAM, additional ports and features on iMac upgrades (and a upgrade from the Air to 2-port Pro basically) and accessories (on iPad).
On another hand, a Pro 16’’, iMac 27’’ and Mac Pro the custom configuration with beefier internal may be very valuable on cash and higher percentage of market compared to base.
Seeing the current models:
> on a 16’’, a upgrade to maximum GPU and a i9 is a 1100$ investment plus the almost certain upgrade to RAM at least
> on a iMac, a upgrade to maximum GPU and i9 cost you 1400$
> on a Mac Pro, the sky is the limit
Besides there are mixed professional uses so you can have a high necessity for the top-end CPU and low need for GPU and vice-versa, and amount of RAM with any configuration.
Now assuming Apple take their Firestorm and Icestorm cores and have a blank sheet for all the rest and they are coming from the Mac Pro customer needs and scaling it down to fit and make economical sense on the other high-end systems what technologies on hardware and software would make sense to spread around the whole field?
Things like other competitors do as chiplets, NVLink. Things that are showing on Apple patents as mixed memory systems. Software solutions as GPU rendering for Final Cut? More custom APIs for high performance apps? What custom hardware paths for acceleration the system should have or would custom made cards as Afterburner make sense for at least an iMac?
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