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Macs With 'M3' Chips Expected to Use TSMC's 3nm Chip Technology With Test Production Reportedly Underway
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Agreed! This is EXTREMELY premature. Are you absolutely bored, MR and have nothing better to do?
We know Apple's chips are planned about three years ahead. We also know portions of the TSMC roadmap. So, not that premature.
For Apple to name the successor to the M1 family anything other than M2 seems unlikely considering every other SoC they have developed (A, S W, H, T, etc.) has been incremented numerically.
Wayne Ma's article did include the claimed code names for M2, M3, M3 Pro and M3 MAX.
I keep checking out the new MBP 16" with the M1Pro, but don't really need it. Currently using the MacBook Air (M1, 2020) and it's definitely speedier than the MBP 15" it replaced. Increase in screen size would be nice, but $1500 more for that, when most of the time it's plugged into an external monitor, just isn't justifiable. Will probably upgrade to the new MBA when the next iteration comes out in 2022.
"Macs With 'M3' Chips Expected to Use TSMC's 3nm Chip Technology With Test Production Reportedly"
This is incredibly relevant information to a rumor site. This is not just a "M3 coming" like you are alluding to. If you don't think that 3nm chip testing is in production or testing at Apple isn't important, and that there is a date that might align with using it? Why are you here
No big surprise. I don't think it is very news worthy to say they are. It should just be expected they are working on 3 or more versions ahead of what is out.
As I understand, TSMC was doing test chips for N3 for a while now and they had problems with them. If "test production" refers to test chips it may not mean much. The test chips are used to develop the tech process (and test some new stuff). Any given iteration of the process during development may work or not. The fact that they are doing "test production" may not indicate how close the process is to actual production.
Yeah, this makes sense.
I’m not sure I believe it, but I also don’t think it’s entirely unbelievable.
The A7, A11, A13 and A14 didn’t have “X” versions so it’s very possible.
Yeah, sounds about right.
However I don’t expect the M2 to launch until Q3 2022 in the new colorful MacBooks, so maybe just push the schedule back by about three months.
Spring 2022 I expect them to bring the M1 Pro and Max to the Mac mini and the 27 inch iMac, and also introduce a higher end M1Max Duo for the top-of-the-line iMac, and then introduce a M1max quad at WWDC for the Mac Pro
Pretty impressive rate of iteration on new process as Intel and AMD are not keeping up
I Think that Apple knows that most consumers won’t care, given that they’ve been doing this with the iPad for years.
In 2020 they introduced an iPad Pro with an A12Z, an iPad with an A12 and an iPad Air with an A14.
Even the current iPad lineup has an iPad with an A13, an iPad mini with an A15, an iPad Air with an A14 and an iPad Pro with an M1, and customers don’t really seem to notice or care.
If a customer can’t tell the difference between a MacBook Air with an M2 or a MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro or max, they probably just need the MacBook Air.
All of the rumors for the 2021 iPad Pro and the first generation of Apple Silicon computers all referred to the processor as the A14X, so I think it’s pretty clear that the M1 is basically exactly what an A14X with a different name would have been.
The M2 Will definitely have a higher single core performance score, but it most definitely won’t be much faster than the M1pro or max.
Also, this won’t be the first time Apple has done this, the A10X was introduced in June 2017, only three months before the A11, and the A12Z was introduced seven months after the A13.
Most people didn’t really seem to care
I’m already keeping an eye out for the Mac Pro Intel towers, soon to be paperweights with wheels. Figure I’ll be able to pick them up for $100 in a few years.
All I know is a "Basic" M2 is gonna come out in a MacBook Air or such, and the people are gonna go Bat $#!+ CRAZY that the M1X and possible M1P MacBook Pros are faster than the M2 MacBook, but the M2 gets better battery life...
They are gonna complain SOOOO hard that, it's an M2!!! it's supposed to be faster than an M1!! NOT
Mark it...
They are gonna complain SOOOO hard that, it's an M2!!! it's supposed to be faster than an M1!! NOT
Mark it...
Apple M1 chip is already past the point of diminishing return for consumer level products. The M1 Pro and Max for procumer and some pro level apps. So Apple isn't doing all this because iPhone and Mac need more CPU all this for their autonomous car projects. Apple in articles have said they need more computing power from bigger chips and better cooling for chips to handle the AI for autonomous driving vehicles. So all this M3 type stuff is Apple using comsumer devices as a testing platform for future automation products.
Apple's chipmaking partner TSMC has kicked off pilot production of chips built on its 3nm process, known as N3, according to Taiwanese supply chain publication DigiTimes.
The report, citing unnamed industry sources, claims that TSMC will move the process to volume production by the fourth quarter of 2022 and start shipping 3nm chips to customers like Apple and Intel in the first quarter of 2023.
As usual, this process advancement should allow for performance and power efficiency improvements, which can lead to faster speeds and/or longer battery life on future iPhones and Macs. The first series of Apple silicon Macs powered by M1 chips already deliver industry-leading performance per watt while running impressively quiet and cool.
The first Apple devices with 3nm chips will likely debut in 2023, including iPhone 15 models with an A17 chip and Apple silicon Macs with M3 chips — all names are tentative. The Information's Wayne Ma last month reported that some of the M3 chips will have up to four dies, which the report said could translate into those chips having up to a 40-core CPU, compared to the 8-core M1 chip and 10-core M1 Pro and M1 Max chips.
In the meantime, Macs with M2 chips and iPhone 14 models are expected to use chips based on TSMC's N4 process, which is another iteration of its 5nm process.
Article Link: Macs With 'M3' Chips Expected to Use TSMC's 3nm Chip Technology With Test Production Reportedly Underway
Am I the only one having issues with the number part going up rather quickly. We don't even have M2 and we are looking toward M3.
The G3 went from 1997-2003 with changes, but they were still called a G3.
The G4 went from 1999-2006 with changes, but they were still called a G4.
The G5 went from 2003-2006 with little changes, but they were still called a G5.
I don't know. Maybe it's just that I'm too old for these "newfangled processor naming conventions" or something...
The G3 went from 1997-2003 with changes, but they were still called a G3.
The G4 went from 1999-2006 with changes, but they were still called a G4.
The G5 went from 2003-2006 with little changes, but they were still called a G5.
I don't know. Maybe it's just that I'm too old for these "newfangled processor naming conventions" or something...
Processor generations occur much faster now then they did in the past.
And M1 Pro and M1 MAX do reflect that they are members of the M1 family by having M1 in their product names.
The names are all for marketing purposes, as we all know.
But if Apple does what they have (mostly) done with the A-series chips, I suspect the number will increment for architectural changes (smaller process, change to the design of cores, new/updated buses, etc.) and the suffix will change for variations within an architecture (number of cores, number of buses, etc.)
G3 and G4 were (mostly) Motorola names for each generation of CPU architecture. See also Wikipedia. There were also G1 and G2, but nobody used those names for product marketing. Motorola's "G5" and "G6" architectures were never used for marketing, and don't refer to the chips that Apple marketed as "G5".
The big thing that distinguishes all G4 (PPC 74xx) chips from G3 (PPC 74x/75x) was the addition of a vector-math unit (AltiVec).
The Apple G5 (PPC 970) was a very different architecture from the G4. It was designed as a joint venture between Apple and IBM (Motorola wasn't involved) and was based on IBM's Workstation-class POWER4 architecture. The most significant difference that Mac users noticed was the fact that it was 64-bit (although Motorola did previously have 64-bit PPC chips, Apple didn't use any of them).
Note that these names had nothing at all to do with application performance, clock speeds or even optimization of the silicon. They were truly representing architectural generations.