Apple’s Mac devices can only use integrated graphics for processing after the transition to Apple Silicon. But according to four newly disclosed patents, Apple is considering adding support for PCIe GPUs to Apple Silicon chips.
For Apple users who are planning to buy a Mac Pro, or who have high processing performance requirements, the performance of discrete graphics cards is more important. On Intel Macs, you can connect a mobile GPU via Thunderbolt or add discrete graphics inside the Mac Pro, but Apple Silicon doesn’t currently have such an extension.
According to four newly disclosed patents, Apple is already considering this issue, and Apple’s patent, titled “Mapping Logical Slots of Graphics Processors to Hardware Slots,” says, “Given their growing computing needs, graphics processing units (GPUs) are now widely used for large-scale workloads.
In another patent, “Kickslot Manager Circuitry For Graphics Processors,” Apple describes a solution that allows switching between GPUs. The slot manager circuitry can use entries in the tracking slot circuitry to specify which GPUs are used by which applications and the slot manager circuitry can pre-fetch configuration register data for a graphics working set from that location before assigning shader core resources to the graphics working set,” the patent states.
