The M1 Pro is Apple's second System on a Chip (SoC) developed for use in Macs, and it marks Apple's continued transition away from the Intel chips that have been used in Macs since 2006.
As a "System on a Chip," the M1 Pro integrates several different components, including the CPU, GPU, unified memory architecture (RAM), Neural Engine, Secure Enclave, SSD controller, image signal processor, encode/decode engines, Thunderbolt controller with USB 4 support, and more, all of which power the different features in the Mac.
Traditional Intel-based Macs used multiple chips for the CPU, GPU, I/O, and security, but integrating multiple components onto one chip allows Apple silicon chips to operate faster and more efficiently than Intel chips. Like the M1, the M1 Pro is built on a 5-nanometer process, but it has 33.7 billion transistors, twice as many transistors as the M1.
The 10-core M1 Pro is equipped with a 16-core GPU, and the 8-core M1 Pro has a 14-core GPU. The 16-GPU variant is up to 2x faster than the M1 chip.
Apple is using a unified memory architecture that lets the CPU, GPU, and other processor components use the same data pool rather than wasting time copying data between one another and swapping between multiple pools of memory. It's a technique that makes all of Apple's M-series chips remarkably efficient.
With the M1, available memory maxed out at 16GB, but the M1 Pro supports up to 32GB. It also offers up to 200GB/s of memory bandwidth.
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