There’s been rumors of Apple working on M-chips that have the GPU and CPU as discrete chiplets. The original rumor said this would happen with the M5 Pro, so it’s potentially on the roadmap.
Theoretically they could farm out the GPU to another company but it seems like they’re set on owning all of the hardware designs.
TSMC has a new tech that allows seamless integration of mini chiplets, i.e. you can add as many CPU/GPU cores in mini chiplets as you wish and glue them seamlessly together, at least in theory. The rumor is that TSMC had some issues with it which is why M5P and M5M are delayed.
Also, I’m curious and in case anyone that knows reads this comment:
Apple say they can’t get the performance they want out of discreet GPUs.
Fair enough. But yet nVidia becomes the most valuable company in the world selling GPUs.
So…
Now I get that Apples use case is essentially sealed consumer devices built with power consumption and performance tradeoffs in mind.
But could Apple use its Apple Silicon tech to build a Mac Pro with its own expandable GPU options?
Or even other brand GPUs knowing they would be used for AI research etc…. If Apple ever make friends with nVidia again of course :-/
What we know of Tim Cooks Apple is that it doesn’t like to leave money on the table, and clearly they are right now!