Apple’s two-year shift to its own silicon from Intel chip kickstarted with the surprisingly-powerful M1 processor. The company is already said to be preparing a new ARM-based processor for its high-end Macs. This chipset could come with as many as 32 high-performance CPU cores!

According to a report from Bloomberg, Apple is making a series of new Mac processors that are aimed at outperforming Intel’s fastest. The report states that the Cupertino giant is working on several successors of its M1 chip. And, “if they live up to expectations, they will significantly outpace the performance of the latest machines running Intel chips,” says the report citing people familiar with the matter.

Apple's answer to Intel's Xeon and AMD's Threadripper!

Apple announced three M1-powered machines, namely, the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and the Mac mini. As of now, the company’s powerful machines like the Mac Pro are still based on Intel silicon. The next custom chip, which is planned for release as early as the spring and later in the fall could power the upgraded versions of the MacBook Pro, both entry-level and high-end iMac desktops as well as a new Mac Pro workstation.

As per the report, the next two series of Apple chips are planned to be more ambitious than expected. Apart from the increased CPU core count, Apple is also working on chips with more GPU cores. For the unaware, the M1 chip comes with either seven or eight GPU cores.

A chip with 128 cores?

Now, one might expect a boost of eight cores or so, but the report states that Apple is currently testing models with 16 and 32-cores. Moreover, it is working on chips with up to 128 cores for late 2021 or 2022!

While Apple is working on a processor design with 16 high-performance CPU cores, the report says that it might release the next chip with only eight or 12 cores enabled, which depends on mass production.