YES, YOU READ THAT TITLE CORRECTLY! I think there’s a pretty good chance that Apple’s Mac Pro
is coming THIS YEAR and that it’s actually gonna pack a NEW Quad-die chip! Yes,
that’s 4 dies instead of the 2 that Apple just gave us with the M1 Ultra Mac Studio!
And no, It’s not gonna look like this because that simply isn’t possible because all of the
memory channels are getting blocked by the other die, and while THIS is certainly a possibility
that I’m open to, I don’t think it’s what Apple is gonna be doing because we just discovered
some brand new Apple patents that reveal a new technology that is even more impressive!
And before I just into all of the leaks and rumors that are pointing to my conclusion of
the Mac Pro still coming this year, as well as the patents that show how Apple
could achieve the new quad-chip, I want to show you guys the new patents
that reveal how Apple was able to create the M1 Ultra chip, because it’s just straight-up genius!
As you probably already know, the M1 Ultra uses two M1 Max dies connected together
through the secret die-to-die interconnect that I
actually showed you guys way back in December when someone took a real photo of the M1 Max!
But what you probably don’t know is that Apple is actually fusing them together while in the
wafer printing process, so Apple essentially prints a bunch of M1 Max dies onto a wafer,
and then they run tests to check for flaws within the dies, and if there are enough functioning
cores inside of both neighboring dies, Apple moves onto the next step in the wafer process,
using 2.5D technology to route over 10,000 signals through the interposer, connecting both M1 Max
dies to create what’s known as the new UltraFusion connection with up to 2.5TB/s of bandwidth.
And then finally, they dice up the wafer into the various M1 Ultra chips,
as well as the M1 Max dies that didn’t quite pass the core tests,
and for the M1 Max dies that had many flaws, the bottom half of the dies would be sliced off,
creating an M1 Pro die that Apple can still through into a Mac and sell instead of having
to throw it away, which is what makes this new M1 chipmaking process so profitable for Apple.
But going back to the UltraFusion interposer, if 2.5TB/s a second sounds like overkill,
I agree because the memory bandwidth is limited to 800GB/s,
so the big question is why would Apple go so overboard with UltraFusion? Well, I think it’s
because they’re giving it enough overhead to prepare for the new Mac Pro’s QUAD-die chip.
So before I get into Apple’s patents for the new 3D printing technology that’ll
allow them to do this, let me first explain why I think this Mac Pro is still coming this year,
despite Ming-Chi Kuo saying it’s getting delayed until 2023.
When Apple announced the M1 Ultra Mac Studio, Apple told us they still have
one more Mac to complete the Apple Silicon transition, the Mac Pro.
***** play the audio about finishing transition ****
Now the important thing to realize here is that Apple mentioned the word “Transition”,
which refers back to Apple announcing a 2-year transition
of their Mac lineup over to Apple silicon.
So if Apple knew they were delaying the Mac Pro until next year, saying the word transition
would be embarrassing if they failed on that promise by not transitioning the Mac Pro..
And the even bigger point is that Apple said that they would leave the announcement of the Mac Pro
for another day, which is 100% guaranteed to get some people
to hold off on buying the brand new Mac Studio and wait for the Mac Pro!
** play MKBHD audio***
So imagine if what Apple meant by saving the Mac Pro for another day means delaying it an
entire year until 2023 while people are choosing not to buy the Mac Studio… yeh,
that would be stupid, so because of that, I think Apple confirmed that it’s coming this year.
And if you needed more confirmation,
Ross Young FINALLY confirmed that his leaks for the 27” iMac Pro were actually WRONG because his
team didn’t expect the new Studio Display to come with a webcam, speakers AND a built-in A13 chip..
So he now believes that his 27” iMac Pro leaks
were actually the upcoming Studio Display XDR with a Mini-LED panel
which has already gone into production and should be revealed at Apple’s WWDC event.
And if he is right, then I 100% guarantee that the new Mac Pro will also be revealed at the event,
because it makes zero sense to release a new Display by itself, there needs to be
a new Mac product to go alongside the display, just like Apple just did with the Studio Mac.
But then going further, TaTech15 on twitter confirmed that the Mac Studio only has one
model number regardless of the chip that’s inside of it, which means that out of the
3 new Mac model numbers Apple registered with the EEC, there are still two of them remaining,
which includes another desktop Mac, which I believe is the Mac Pro!
And if the Mac Pro does get revealed at WWDC, then it would mean that we are in fact going to be
getting something that’s even more powerful than the M1 Ultra Mac Studio.. A new Quad-die chip!
But there’s a pretty big problem in terms of what chip could be going into this machine
because we were expecting the quad chip to be based on the M1 because Mark Gurman said
that the Mac Pro will come with up to a 40-core chip with literally 4 M1 Max dies put together.
And the crazy thing is that he was 100% right with his leaks about the 10-core M1 Max chip
as well as the 20-core M1 Ultra chip which he nailed perfectly,
so how could he be wrong about the M1 Quad chip?
Well, first of all, Hector Martin, who is a software developer working to bring Linux to Apple
Silicon, has confirmed that the M1 Max’s interrupt controller only has support for two dies,
which means that a 4-die chip is literally impossible if it’s based on M1.
So because of that, Mark Gurman has literally just confirmed on his Twitter Spaces version of PowerOn
that he believes that Apple has shifted the M1 Ultra Duo chip over to the M2 Ultra Duo!
So this means that instead of a 40-core chip,
we could actually see a 48-core chip because there are leaks from 9to5mac that the M2 Pro
and Max chips will actually have 12 CPU cores instead of 40.
And in his Twitter spaces, Mark also confirmed that he thinks the regular M2 chip
will be announced between May and July, which makes a WWDC release likely!
And this sounds very weird because they’d be releasing both the lowest-end M2 chip
and their highest-end chips around the same time,
but I think Apple will disguise those chips with a new Mac Pro-exclusive family of chip
brands like the X1 or X1 Duo kind of like how Intel has the Core and the Xeon lineups.
And then adding to all of this, we JUST got a couple of brand new leaks from sources
like MauriQHD who says that Apple is about to release a chip even better than the M1 Ultra,
which hints at an M1 or M2 Ultra DUO chip!
And then LeaksApplePro just gave us an exclusive leak mentioning that Apple
is planning on releasing the Mac Pro this year with two or even four M1 Ultra chips alongside
the Studio Display, but they won’t be shipping until later in the year, likely December.
So with all of that said, let’s finally get into those brand new patents that detail how
Apple can make the quad-die chip happen!
Within some of Apple’s patents, they showed a new future die that has interconnects on both the left
and right sides, which means they can combine four dies side-by-side, interconnecting them all, which
would mean that all of the RAM and I/O connections would have to be on the top and bottom,
which makes it a bit difficult unless Apple could use RAM stacking technology
to stack the two RAM packages on top of each other instead of having multiple RAM packages.
However, this method of combining dies side by side could be problematic because the left die
would have to send data through the middle dies all the way over to the right die,
so I don’t think Apple will go with this method.
The other method which I think is more likely is that Apple will literally take two M2
Ultra dies and stack them on top of each other like you see in this image.
And the reason that this is the better method is because they can not only connect over
10,000 signals between the two M2 Max dies, but they can add even more signals
vertically from the bottom M2 Ultra die up through a new vertical UltraFusion interconnect into the
second M2 Ultra die, which will interconnect all of them in the most efficient way possible.
This will allow the bottom left die to communicate directly with the top right die
kind of like in an X pattern, as well as to any other die in the M2 Ultra Duo chip.
And if you think this sounds absolutely insane,
check out these detailed screenshots from the patents!
The second package level dies and passive interposer chiplet may include active side face
up toward the first package level that includes a plurality of contact pads and a dielectric layer.
All of or only a group of the plurality of dies may include a communication bridge routing,
which is used to connect at least two chips from an adjacent package level.
That right there is literally the UltraFusion interpose going vertically
to the second layer of dies!
Moving further, “a communication path can exist between any given pair of terminals. Thus,
the communication bridges can be incorporated into the silicon within each and all active dies,
where each die can be bonded to a pair of dies in an opposing package
level to provide the communication path or die stitching between the two dies.
But wait, there’s more! “In this manner, the dies can form a full 3DIC interconnect fabric
among all the dies on all package levels. Passive silicon interposer stitching dies can
also be includeed within the interconnect fabric, or in other words, UltraFusion!
So this LITERALLY means stitching four dies together through an interposer like UltraFusion,
so they can all communicate together, and this is a quick sketch of what it could look like,
two Ultras on top of eachother!
And if you’re wondering how high the top die will sit from the bottom die,
I think it’ll literally be stacked flush on top of it.
“Microbumps may utilize more conventional assembly techniques, while hybrid bonding with metal to
metal and oxide to oxide bonding can achieve a high connection density, and lower latency,
for higher-end applications, as well as smaller z-height, or vertical height.
So if we want to imagine how this will look like, this is a patent image of the M1 Ultra chip,
showing 8 RAM chips as well as the two M1 Max dies,
so here is my modified version showing how Apple can easily stack another Ultra chip
onto the current one, and then adapt the metal heat transfer cover for cooling.
And if you’re wondering how Apple could possibly cool this M2 Ultra Duo chip, I’ll leave that
for another video, but if you enjoyed seeing how Apple could make this Mac Pro quad-chip possible,
go ahead and click the circle above to subscribe because we’re getting our Mac Studio in soon
and we’ll be tearing it down! So thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next video!