I don't think it does. I highly doubt Apple is going to create another CPU line for this market, which is tiny. Or introduce a new set of processors going forward with this product introduction, instead of building on what they have now. The M1 series was just finally fleshed out. The timing of a new introduction, to me, doesn't fit.
if the M1 family of SoCs is done it is going to be hard for Apple introduce something else that using M1 family tech
that is a different SoC and still call it 'M1'.
Pretty likely like whatever Apple does is going to be something "> M1" . Whether that is M2 or M3 is perhaps up in the air but M1 is basically 'done'.
They will have to address those points but I believe they will leverage what they have now with the Ultra and reveal more of it's capabilities. Specifically PCI expansion and GPU expansion. GPU and RAM expansion are both contentious from what we have seen from the lineup so far. If they offer either kind of those, it will be a privilege, with huge $$$ attached to it.
GPU is basically hung up on 3rd party GPU drivers. without GPU drivers there are not dGPUs. There aren't any.. Perhaps that changes at WWDC 2022 , but I wouldn't hold my breath.
Apple photoshopped out the UntraFusion connector from their initial M1 Max die photos. I think there is hype now that Apple has photoshopped or grossly under revealed UltraFusion and that will magically spring forth when the Mac Pro ships.
Two Maxes with a I/O provisioning die stuck in-between them. Or the interposer is much bigger than Apple photos have shown so far with a huge set of hidden features.
That seems doubtful since Apple appears to be so focused on 'unifying' the memory between the GPUs on the two Max dies in an 'Ultra SoC' that they are willing to throw away external, off-package I/O to keep that unified-ness at max. ( grand claims taking out the 3090.... )
Like I asked who is going to make a GPU for the Mac market? Certainly not Nivida, and is there enough business left for AMD to bother? The RAM ceiling, Apple probably doesn't care and maybe their data show most users never reached that max threshold and possibly that number represents 1-3% of users. Making a decision to let those users go and focus on internal PCI expansion and making a GPU cards possible and turn off the built in GPU cores and redirect them to performance cores instead.
Why is Apple going to make GPU cards possible if the absolutely priority #1 is Perf/Watt? Apple isn't likely going to build some higher power consuming GPU card. Don't care about > 512-1,000 GB memory capacity but does care about high power consuming GPU? Probably not. If willing to throw the high RAM workings set users out the door, then probably willing to throw super high end GPU users out the door too. ( probably far more higher priority is scaling their own iGPU up to 128 cores than letting other GPU folks 'in' )
The PCI-e expansion is about stuff than is higher bandwidth that Thunderbolt 4 can handle and things Apple doesn't want to touch. That is mostly multiple storage drives ( RAID , double digit TB (and up) storage capacity , etc. ) , High end networking > 10GbE , A/V I/O ( e.g., 8K (and up) raw video capture, legacy Audio I/O cards , etc. ),
Could/should that include high TDP GPGPU/ML compute cards? that would help with some of the blowback. But it doesn't fit the Apple saving the planet with lower power consuming systems themes. If not full fledged GPU-display cards then doesn't really disrupt Apple driving the general Metal interface to just Apple GPU only. But it wouldn't close the door on a MI200 or MI300 'compute card'.
I think folks are presuming that "for another day for Mac Pro " implied 'real soon now'. That could easily be an October reveal and still hit their "around two years" timeline (.e.g, in 2022).
I don't think they have to cram some M1 hack into a Mac Pro if it doesn't fit. Even more so if there is a better 'natural' fit with what is in the M2 or M3 line up.
For M3 ( on TSMC N3 ) Apple could probably shrink the Utlra class performance onto one die with even better Perf/Watt than the M1 Ultra SoC. the Mac Pro sliding into 2023 so can pick that up (with an PCI-e I/O die between them. and probably would have lined up with early 2019 roadmaps as being late 2022 pre-pandemic. ).
