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Comment by akritrime | Hacker News Reader

If both iMac and iMac Pro are powered by the same chip, then what would be the differentiating factor between them?

I’d imagine the pro would have a better screen. Intended for professional creative work.

Oh yeah, that could be it. Apple's Pro Display XDR with an ARM processor would be interesting, though the question is are the M SoCs ready to drive those yet?

They already do.

More graphics power in the form of a discrete GPU, more storage and memory offered...etc.

With memory and storage soldered ofcourse...as is tradition.

Hmm, the discrete GPU would be interesting, but I don't think would go back to that. The SoC model has been working out great for Apple, I can't see them seceding control to get a discrete 3rd-party GPU working.

> I can't see them seceding control to get a discrete 3rd-party GPU working.

Nobody said the discrete GPU would be 3rd party. I suspect Apple will release their own discrete GPU before long. SoC works well for the long end, but I can't see it being worth it at the Mac Pro level.

That's also true. They already made some kind of add-on card for the Mac Pro, right?

Yes the AfterBurner card for acceleration of ProRes content

I'd imagine you'd get a similar situation to the ipads where the X chip is far superior in the same gen eg:

iMac - m2 chip + max out at 64 gig ram

iMac Pro - m2x chip + max out at 256 gig ram

Hmm the X Chip difference makes sense, because they are the same chip with the regular one built to be mobile. But in case of M2, the same distinction doesn't make sense because they are built for larger devices by default. Though I guess, they could have two completely separate chips and just use the X as convention.

You’re arguing about naming conventions for a product that hasn’t been released, and where names are all speculative. What you think is an m1x may be called an m2, or a m2x or a dp2fgh.

Perhaps the iMac Pro could run TWO of the chips somehow.

Well, I would expect that might be an option depending on what powers the Mac Pro going forward. I wonder if Apple is at the multi-CPU stage. I am expecting external RAM and I hope ECC for the next Mac Pro.

Given the onchip everything it’d have to be some sort of NUMA architecture and I’m not sure it’s setup for that.

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