Apple recently unveiled its new M2 chip. It is the second generation of Apple silicon chips, but the successor to the M1 still uses a 5nm process. That’s not enough for the Pro versions of the M2 to come – but when?

Apple has often had to deal with late – significantly late – products. The first products with the M2 Pro will also appear later than expected, but in this case the ball is not in Apple’s half of the game. The manufacturer continues to obtain its top processors from the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, TSMC. TSMC is at the forefront of semiconductor miniaturization, but even in Taiwan, it’s hard to defy the laws of physics.

Bottom line and drastically simplified it can be said: The smaller the chips, the greater the effort involved in their production and the more gigantic and complex the equipment, only the exposure machines, mostly obtained from the Dutch consortium ASML, are scarce and their necessary further development for Exposure of even smaller structures is time consuming.

When is the M2 Pro coming?

The M2 Pro and other variants such as an M2 Max or an M2 Ultra will certainly rely on a smaller structure width: it will have to be 3nm, sourced from TSMC. However, mass production of 3nm chips will not start until later in the year, as analyst Jeff Pu had previously noted . Against this background, when the first M2 Pro products can be expected can only be roughly estimated, but an M2 Pro Mac Mini, for example, is not to be expected this year.

Such is to be developed at Apple under the internal code name J474. The M2 Pro is said to come with eight performance cores and four efficiency cores. It would have a total of 12 cores, two more than the current M2 Pro.