Apple Cancelled High-End M2 Extreme and M3 Extreme Chips Over Cost Concerns: Report

Apple is said to have developed more powerful versions of its proprietary M2 and M3-series processors before deciding against bringing them to market. According to a seasoned journalist, the Cupertino-based tech giant worked on M2 Extreme and M3 Extreme chips in 2022, which would sit above the existing Ultra lineup. These SoCs would reportedly have featured twice the CPU and GPU core counts offered by Apple's Ultra chips at the time. Apple is said to have ultimately cancelled both chips due to manufacturing costs and limited demand.

Apple's M2 Extreme and M3 Extreme Chips Were Reportedly Cancelled

In the latest edition of the Power On newsletter, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple had internally developed Extreme variants of its M-series processors. The chips were reportedly designed to offer twice as many CPU and GPU cores as the company's Ultra-branded silicon. Hence, these would have potentially been positioned as the most powerful processors Apple had ever planned for a Mac at the time.

The journalist said that the Extreme branding would have followed Apple's existing naming convention of Mac chips, such as Pro, Max, and Ultra. With the M2 Extreme and M3 Extreme chips, Apple would have targeted professional users with demanding workflows, including high-end 3D rendering, scientific computing, and advanced video production.

The newsletter reportedly corroborates Gurman's claims from 2022, when the journalist reported that Apple was testing a new Mac Pro powered by the M2 Ultra chip while simultaneously working on an even more powerful M2 Extreme processor. At the time, the M2 Ultra-powered Mac Pro was reported to feature up to a 24-core CPU, 76-core GPU, and 192GB of unified memory. On the other hand, the scrapped M2 Extreme variant was tipped to have as many as 48 CPU cores and 152 GPU cores.

At the time, Gurman had suggested that the M2 Extreme-powered Mac Pro would have carried a starting price of at least $10,000 (roughly Rs. 9.65 lakh), before any upgrades. It was, however, shelved due to high manufacturing costs, manufacturing complexities, and a relatively small customer base. Apple reportedly made a similar decision with the M3 Extreme SoC.

The development comes after Apple quietly discontinued the Mac Pro earlier this year. It was a product that had been part of its Mac portfolio for almost 20 years, with the first-ever model debuting in August 2006.