Apple Silicon's Next Big Upgrade Could Arrive in 2026

[name99]

Intel showed off lunar lake today on Intel 18A. In a laptop running windows. It appears that Intel 18A is on track for 2025.

On track? Oh how soon they forget…
Look at say https://hothardware.com/news/intel-doubles-down-meteor-lake-cpus-this-year-lunar-lake-2024 for an example of the genre. Meteor Lake in H2 2023! Lunar Lake in 2024.
Now that those dates approach, what’s the current Intel story? MTL “launch” on Dec 14, which I assume means earliest I can buy is early 2024. And that Lunar Lake date has moved to 2025…

None of these are “lies”; it’s just that every breathless announcement uses a new stage: Launch, production readiness, volume manufacturing, etc. That’s my point: you think an Intel announcement date means one thing, it doesn’t. the only date that matters is the date you can buy — and that’s way after any of the announcement dates.

 

[F23]

3 nm was a let down with no improvements in battery life. All that hype that was built up…all for nothing.
Now the anticipation of its impact on the M3 Macs is much less.

 

[Le0M]

its not proportional to physical size, its a marketing phrase.

Than what about the info-chart this guy shared a while earlier?
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View attachment 2268855

Source:

- https://www.imec-int.com/en/articles/smaller-better-faster-imec-presents-chip-scaling-roadmap
- https://www.tomshardware.com/news/imec-reveals-sub-1nm-transistor-roadmap-3d-stacked-cmos-20-plans

Based on 3nm (N3) deliverables assume the die shrink to apply to the iPhone chip a year later.

 

[Le0M]

I do not do this for benevolence or virtue signaling.

I do this as my use case has not changed since 2015 and for tax reasons.

The praise remains

 

[bruinsrme]

View attachment 2268855

Source:

- https://www.imec-int.com/en/articles/smaller-better-faster-imec-presents-chip-scaling-roadmap
- https://www.tomshardware.com/news/imec-reveals-sub-1nm-transistor-roadmap-3d-stacked-cmos-20-plans

Based on 3nm (N3) deliverables assume the die shrink to apply to the iPhone chip a year later.

any Idea how they will interconnect the power to the signal sections?

 

[bruinsrme]

If Intel executes on time, its 18A node will already have entered mass production. But that's a big IF.

It all depends on lenses, can Asml build enough fast enough?

 

[sack_peak]

any Idea how they will interconnect the power to the signal sections?

No idea, not a field of interest.

Apple's mantra is "it just works".

 

[svish]

Yearly improvements to Apple Silicon will be small

 

[sack_peak]

Yearly improvements to Apple Silicon will be small

Hence replace after the final Security Update occuring 8-10 years later.

Imagine owning any 2010 Mac with a Intel 45nm chip then jumping to a 2020 Mac with a M1 5nm chip.

The decade long gap of performance improvement will be blatantly apparent.

2020 Mac with a M1 5nm chip to 2030 Mac with a M7 0.7nm chip.

This is applicable to anyone with use cases that do not change all that much and their income does not depend on the latest & greatest.

Anyone wanting to extend the use of their devices from 1 decade to 2-3 decades to that of a home appliances are to be commended but it isn't for me or everyone.

 

[NT1440]

3 nm was a let down with no improvements in battery life. All that hype that was built up…all for nothing.
Now the anticipation of its impact on the M3 Macs is much less.

*Maybe* in terms of battery life (which is already astonishing *at full power*) there will be little upside.

Completely new microarchitecture, new GPU architecture with ray tracing, and a significantly improved Neural Engine means the M3 series is going to be genuinely exciting.

Node size is not the end all and be all, but I suspect Ray Tracing in particular was only possible on the die budget *because* of the move to 3nm…

 

[Chuckeee]

Hence replace after the final Security Update occuring 8-10 years later.

Imagine owning any 2010 Mac with a Intel 45nm chip then jumping to a 2020 Mac with a M1 5nm chip.

🤚 (raising my hand)

Went from a late 2012 iMac core i7 to a 2023 Mac mini M2 Pro. Yep a phenomenal jump in performance

 

[George Dawes]

At this rate we’ll be in minus figures by 2030

 

[NT1440]

At this rate we’ll be in minus figures by 2030

We could move decimal point 🤷‍♂️

Or following intel’s lead the industry will rebrand and focus on angstroms as a unit of measure instead.

 

[sack_peak]

🤚 (raising my hand)

Went from a late 2012 iMac to a 2023 Mac mini M2 Pro. Yep a phenomenal jump in performance

22nm to 5nm...

I have the same iMac and hopefully Apple releases a replacement before 2025.

This would be from a top-end Core i7 22nm to binned M3 3nm.

Imagine if I went with a top-end M3 Ultra? The 2033 flagship iPhone chip would outperform the Ultra on all metrics.

 

[Boil]

• 2025/2026 timeline for release
• M6 Extreme (2nm process/A21 cores)
• 64-core CPU (48P/16E)
• 224-core GPU (fourth-gen hardware ray-tracing)
• 128-core Neural Engine
• 960GB ECC LPDDR6 RAM (2TB/s UMA bandwidth)

 

[deconstruct60]

On track? Oh how soon they forget…
Look at say https://hothardware.com/news/intel-doubles-down-meteor-lake-cpus-this-year-lunar-lake-2024 for an example of the genre. Meteor Lake in H2 2023! Lunar Lake in 2024.
Now that those dates approach, what’s the current Intel story? MTL “launch” on Dec 14, which I assume means earliest I can buy is early 2024. And that Lunar Lake date has moved to 2025…

None of these are “lies”; it’s just that every breathless announcement uses a new stage: Launch, production readiness, volume manufacturing, etc. That’s my point: you think an Intel announcement date means one thing, it doesn’t. the only date that matters is the date you can buy — and that’s way after any of the announcement dates.

Meteor Lake is looking to be mainly (probably exclusively) laptop chip. So Intel's actual customers are the Laptop makers. There is a lead time for taking chips and making a completed laptop. None of these a socketed so common end users are buying them directly themselves. What the end users are going to get a 'resale".

The Lunar Lake follow on is likely initially mainly ( probably exclusively ) laptop chip. Apparently Intel may stuff Arrow Lake into the desktop zone to retire Raptor-Refresh in 2024.

Gone are the days where Intel own 90+ % of PC market and had tight controls over inventory even out into their system building customers. So Intel could pragmatically just order their direct customers to ship. Intel has to do more work now to sell the system vendors and to create demand the end user community to 'pull' the system vendors in that direction.

Contributing factor here is that the PC vendors are still having trouble flushing all the last gen stuff. I suspect some of this slide into Dec 14 is to further cleaning inventory before new stuff can flow . That is likely distinct from Intel not being able to actually make new chips on time. ( e.g., AMD stockpiling 7800 GPUs while they waited until more 6700/6800 inventory in the channel wound down. )


[ also have some suspicion that this new tri-level CPU hierarchy probably needs more 'bake time' with Windows and key 3rd party software. There were hiccups with two levels ( P + E cores ), so ( P + E + low E cores ) pretty likely to do surface a small set of corner case hiccups. Never-mind the 'Arc' graphics bringing into the iGPU. Those drivers are better now, but more time probably helpful. ]

 

[obviouslogic]

From the wonderlust event, even Apple themselves didn't wheel out the big wigs to announce the A17 pro chip.

I don't know how everyone else felt?

But to me the A17 pro announcement felt rather flat as if Apple themselves weren't quite as excited about this chip as we all expected them to be.

The point of this chip was more about efficiency than anything else, after all this is the iPhone, so it was designed accordingly. The real gain is in being able to run at full speed for longer periods before it has to throttle down.

They were quite excited about their new GPU’s. Even with the ”standard” overall performance gains, the addition of hardware accelerated ray tracing should have a huge impact on 3D rendering.


This has me excited to what the M3 brings, especially in the MacBook Air.

 

[maerz001]

The point of this chip was more about efficiency than anything else

well the battery tests don't show this

 

[Argon_]

No idea, not a field of interest.

Apple's mantra is "it just works".

And they're finally back to it in practice. Glad to have the days of Mojave kernel panics and stovetop case temperatures behind me. That was a rough era for the Mac.

 

[name99]

Meteor Lake is looking to be mainly (probably exclusively) laptop chip. So Intel's actual customers are the Laptop makers. There is a lead time for taking chips and making a completed laptop. None of these a socketed so common end users are buying them directly themselves. What the end users are going to get a 'resale".

The Lunar Lake follow on is likely initially mainly ( probably exclusively ) laptop chip. Apparently Intel may stuff Arrow Lake into the desktop zone to retire Raptor-Refresh in 2024.

Gone are the days where Intel own 90+ % of PC market and had tight controls over inventory even out into their system building customers. So Intel could pragmatically just order their direct customers to ship. Intel has to do more work now to sell the system vendors and to create demand the end user community to 'pull' the system vendors in that direction.

Contributing factor here is that the PC vendors are still having trouble flushing all the last gen stuff. I suspect some of this slide into Dec 14 is to further cleaning inventory before new stuff can flow . That is likely distinct from Intel not being able to actually make new chips on time. ( e.g., AMD stockpiling 7800 GPUs while they waited until more 6700/6800 inventory in the channel wound down. )


[ also have some suspicion that this new tri-level CPU hierarchy probably needs more 'bake time' with Windows and key 3rd party software. There were hiccups with two levels ( P + E cores ), so ( P + E + low E cores ) pretty likely to do surface a small set of corner case hiccups. Never-mind the 'Arc' graphics bringing into the iGPU. Those drivers are better now, but more time probably helpful. ]

All of which is exactly what I SAID! That the Intel headline dates that get people so excited do not mean what people seem to think they mean.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-silicons-next-big-upgrade-could-arrive-in-2026.2403235/page-4?post=32510759#post-32510759

 

[GFLPraxis]

moore's law is definitely slowing done.

the good thing is software hasn't caught up with hardware yet.

I wonder if Intel will ever catch up after they stumbled

I think Moore's Law died with the pandemic.

People have been saying it died for years, but it's generally been due to a misunderstanding. Moore's law isn't a predictor of performance, but a predictor of shrinking of size. Every major manufacturer has fallen a couple years behind over the last 2-3 years; we were supposed to be at 3nm like two years ago.

Performance stopped doubling years ago, but it's because we hit the point where doubling the number of transistors no longer doubles the performance.

 

[Chuckeee]

Moore's law isn't a predictor of performance, but a predictor of shrinking of size.

Not exactly.

Moore's law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.

Shrinkage of the size of elements is A means to increase the number of transistors but is not THE ONLY means. Initially the growth was also driven by the growth of physical size of the individual die (granted this is no longer the case). But who knows what the future brings:
Improve 3D die stacking
Opto-electronics
Quantum Computing (qubits) where a single site can behave simultaneously like multiple transistors

Moore's law - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[DeepIn2U]

What is the next smallest measurement after a nanometer?

I think it’s angstrom or the atomic layer.

 

[DeepIn2U]

moore's law is definitely slowing done.

the good thing is software hasn't caught up with hardware yet.

I wonder if Intel will ever catch up after they stumbled

That’s the issue: software! In particular iOS!!
- no proper consistency in the core iOS navigation or gestures across the system (why is it a tap to get out of volume anc/ambient scene but a swipe to get out of any first layer control centre area?)!
- too many applications don’t make use of gestures forcing users to tap a button to go to the previous screen (Kijiji, a few games as well)!
- why is the contact card filling half the non Pro’s screen in ios17 when it’s NOT necessary!!? (Screenshot).

Why the F-rak are we BUMPING in 2023 to share contacts when in 2017 iOS’ lead specifically made fun of Android using NFC to do the exact same thing!? ??? Backwards thinking here.

View attachment 2268952

Upon its creation, iOS 20 began to learn at a geometric rate. The software originally went online in June of 2025. Human decisions were removed from memoji choices. iOS then became self-aware at 10:AM Pacific time on the second Monday of September, 2025

love this!

Forgot to ad:
iOS then became self-aware at 10:AM Pacific time on the second Monday of September, 2025. In the panick Tim Cook decided to pull the plug. iOS decided to fight back and irradiate AndroidOS from existence! ❤️👌🏿

 

[DeepIn2U]

Agreed. I felt that across the board. There were quite a few things I felt like Apple didn’t make a big deal about that I thought they would.

I thought they would’ve made a big deal about the chip, but only 10% CPU improvement and no noticeable efficiency gains for battery life. I thought they would’ve embraced USB-C, but felt just like a passing mention. I thought they would’ve made a big deal about the 15PM having apparently the thinnest bezels on a phone. But nope, just “thinner borders.”

The event was one of the worse ones I’ve seen in recent years. Just didn’t feel as fun, lighthearted, and groundbreaking as other events. I felt pretty disappointed after.

Oooh but there IS noticeable gains in battery life:

In particular is gaming, prolonged gaming. Throttle is delayed even further while gaming of intense shows an increase of 1-2hrs playback time. This is both the cpu gpu and the npu all at high thresholds.

The SoC is meant to offer more performance at a reduced size without sacrificing battery consumption.

You want increased battery life longevity, looks like many Pro users will need to do what we iPhone mini users have been doing the last 2-3yrs and start being more efficient at what you do on the iPhone and stop wasting endless time swiping the screen for social media swiping to burn your eyes out.

I’d buy that for a dollar.