Apple M1X chips may borrow names from the iPhone lineup — we hope not

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Apple's M1X chips may borrow names from the iPhone lineup

Apple M1X
(Image credit: Apple)

Today is Apple's big "Unleashed" event where we expect the company to reveal its new MacBook Pro models and perhaps more. Check out our live blog if you want to follow along with the event as it happens.

The potentially significant redesign for the MacBook Pros, the first in six years, is a big draw for some users. However, the Apple M1X chip inside is the most interesting mystery and according to a new leak from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman that may not even be the name of the new processor (via MacRumors).

The leak originates from a developer that found reference to the "M1 Pro" and "M1 Max" in their app logs along with reference to the 3024 x1964 and 3456 x 2234 resolutions that were previously identified for the 14-inch MacBook Pro and 16-inch MacBook Pro respectively. 

Gurman is quick to point out that he is not certain whether those will be the actual names used by Apple in marketing, but as there are two distinct variants of the new chip it will need more than simply M1X. Going off Apple's past chip naming conventions, it could be that the pair will be named M1X and M1Z. That was the strategy that they employed for the A12 Bionic variants used in the iPad Pros from 2018 and 2020.

While the naming is interesting, the performance differences between the two and the original M1 chip will be the most important news today. Rumors indicate that both chips will have the same 10 CPU cores (8 high-performance and 2 energy-efficient cores), but will differ in their graphics with 16 graphics cores in the lower-end and 32 graphics cores in the high-end. Both should dramatically outperform the original M1, which has 8 CPU cores (4 high-performance and 4 energy-efficient) and eight graphics cores. The new chips should also support up to 32 and 64GB of RAM, up from 16GB on the M1. It's easy to see why reports are showing nearly a third of MacBook Pro owners are ready to make the upgrade.

We don't have much longer to go, again if you want to follow along with us our live blog will be covering everything that's happening up to and through today's event.

Sean Riley
Sean Riley

Sean Riley has been covering tech professionally for over a decade now. Most of that time was as a freelancer covering varied topics including phones, wearables, tablets, smart home devices, laptops, AR, VR, mobile payments, fintech, and more.  Sean is the resident mobile expert at Laptop Mag, specializing in phones and wearables, you'll find plenty of news, reviews, how-to, and opinion pieces on these subjects from him here. But Laptop Mag has also proven a perfect fit for that broad range of interests with reviews and news on the latest laptops, VR games, and computer accessories along with coverage on everything from NFTs to cybersecurity and more.