More information has emerged about what the T2 chip in the new iMac Pro does

About that the new iMac Pro it will get a dedicated chip for specific tasks, which is based on processors from other Apple devices, has been known for a long time. The first such processor (referred to as the Apple T1) has been found in all MacBook Pros with Touch Bar since last fall. In this case, the T1 processor takes care of the Touch Bar function, Touch ID and manages security tasks and systems. Its counterpart, which is implemented in the new iMacs Pro, should serve a similar purpose. Yesterday during the day, one of the macOS developers confirmed it on his Twitter account.

The new processor is called T2 and is again built on the ARMv7 platform. This is a so-called SoC (system on chip), which in the previous case ran on a modified version of watchOS. According to the developer's information, this chip provides, for example, the SMC, Face Time camera, sound control, SSD disk controllers, system security, local data encryption, etc. It is in this processor that all encryption keys for your device should be stored, so they will be stored locally and will not they need to be stored, for example, on the network.

In order for the new processor to work and for the iMac to use it, the iMac Pro version of macOS High Sierra includes a special Startup Security Utility program that allows additional and additional computer security settings (for example, a modified Secure Boot) made possible by this integrated chip. For example, users can disable booting from an external source.

It was previously speculated that Apple would place in its new iMacs A10X processors from iPads (or A10 from iPhones), however, this information turned out to be false. There is clearly no reason to implement such powerful processors yet given how demanding tasks they would handle. In addition to information about the T2 chip, the first performance benchmarks also appeared. It's probably not too surprising that the new iMac Pro is by far the most powerful computer Apple currently offers. According to the first benchmarks from the Geekbench program, the middle configuration of the new iMac achieved a 45% higher result than the 2013 Mac Pro (and twice the result of the most powerful classic 5K iMac). Real information about the raw performance will start to appear in the following days, this is more like a shot of what we can expect from the new product. Considering its price (and the almost five-year difference), such a jump from the Mac Pro was to be expected.

Source: Appleinsider, Twitter, Macrumors