While this news is about "a rumor according to sources familiar with the matter" it's obvious that Apple will be doing this at some point. Whether it's the M2 or if there will be a new letter designator (X-series silicon for eXtreme performance? Apple X1?) I am very interested to see what the performance numbers will be for an ARM-powered workstation rocking 16 to 32 high power cores. Aside from the Ampere eMAG, is a…
M2 seems very unlikely to me because that will create product misinformation easily. Imagine the following M1 -- 4 A14 cores M2 -- 8 A14 cores M3 -- 4 A15 cores That "third generation" sounds better, but is actually inferior to the second generation. X1 or M1x seem much more likely. It's the same reason why they made an A12x instead of calling it A13. They probably need 3 designs, but economies of scale begin to be a…
M1 (winter 2020) — 4x A14 cores
M2x (autumn 2021) — 8x A15 cores
M2 (winter/spring 2022) — 4x A15 cores
etc.
There’s really no reason for the naming and timing of Pro machines to lag behind consumer machines just because of arcane numbering. And there’s precedent, Intel Core Duo Macs were released before Intel Core “Solo” Macs.
But if they’re actually ready for WWDC, then no, it’ll just be called M1x.
As for the Mac Pro… we’ll it’s definitely going to be weird. I think the existence of the Afterburner card proves that Apple sees a future in highly specialized modular add-ons providing most of the differentiation, but buyers would still want a bigger chip than in the 16” laptops, so who knows… of course nobody even knows how an M1 would perform with proper cooling and a higher clock!
[edit] also making M2x ahead of M2 will give them the benefits of “binning” some chips