Apple completes Apple silicon transition with M2 Ultra Mac Pro

Apple has finally announced the Apple silicon variant of its pro desktop, Mac Pro. The new Mac Pro features the latest M2 Ultra chipset, replacing the Intel Xeon W processor found in its predecessor. This marks the closure of Apple’s transition from Intel processors to Apple silicon.

Apple says the new M2 Ultra Mac Pro is up to three times faster than the previous Intel models. It comes with a 24-core CPU, up to a 76-core GPU, and up to 192GB of memory. The computer carries the performance of not just one but seven Afterburner cards natively, with the ability to play 22 8K ProRes video streams. It can also ingest 24 4K camera feeds and encode them to ProRes in real time when using six video I/O cards. Pro workflows like video transcoding and 3D simulations are up to three times faster.

The connectivity options offer seven PCIe expansion slots, eight Thunderbolt 4 ports, three USB-A ports, two 10Gb ethernet ports, and two HDMI ports. The HDMI ports can support 8K resolution at 240Hz frame rate. Apple has also included a headphone hack alongside WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support. The Mac Pro with M2 Ultra comes in tower or rack form, starting at $6,999 for the base tower. You can configure the Mac Pro accordingly from Apple’s website.