Apple actually built an M3 Extreme chip designed to double the processing power of the M3 Ultra. Then, they killed it. Along with it went the Mac Pro, ending a legendary 20-year run for Apple's most iconic desktop earlier this year. According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, this canceled silicon was the only thing that could have justified the Mac Pro's astronomical price tag over the Mac Studio.

Apple officially pulled the plug on the Mac Pro in March. It was a quiet death for a loud machine. The 2023 Apple silicon Mac Pro simply couldn't justify its existence, as it used the exact same M2 Ultra chip as the cheaper Mac Studio yet cost twice as much.

The "Extreme" Blueprint

Gurman reports the M3 Extreme was engineered specifically to fix this embarrassing performance gap. The processor was a monster. It was designed to double the core counts of the standard M3 Ultra, which natively tops out at a 32-core CPU and an 80-core GPU.

Production Costs and Limited Demand

Why kill the Extreme? Money. The production costs were brutal, and the target market was incredibly small. Apple had already hit this exact wall before. Back in 2022, rumors surfaced that Apple was testing an M2 Extreme configuration packing up to 48 CPU cores and 152 GPU cores.

At the time, Gurman estimated an M2 Extreme Mac Pro would start at a blistering $10,000—before any user upgrades. Ultimately, Apple realized the math just didn't work. The massive development and manufacturing expenses couldn't be justified for a machine that would barely sell.