Yesterday, Apple launched the new MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro models equipped with the new M2 chip. Immediately after that, we learned about the next-generation M-series chip Apple M3.
According to a Weibo blogger, the Apple M3 is currently in the works with a project code Palma. It should be taped out in 2023 / Q3, using TSMC’s 3nm process.
TSMC has increased shipments of its 5nm process technology. It’s the most advanced technology in TSMC’s product portfolio, and the fab hopes to move toward a 3nm process later this year.
In April of this year, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said that Apple is developing an iMac product equipped with the Apple M3 chip. The latter is scheduled to hit the stores as early as the end of next year. At the same time, we learned that the company will release the iMac Pro, but it will come much later.
The Information says some Apple M3 chips will be 40-core CPUs. As for a reference, the M1 chips are octa-core, and the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips are 10-core chips.
Apple M2 Parameters
As for the Apple M2 chip, it’s considered to be the most powerful SoC of the Cupertino-based company to date. The chip uses a second-generation 5nm technology, which makes the M2 chip bring a further breakthrough in the industry-leading energy consumption ratio of the M1 chip. The speed of the central processing unit is increased by 18%, the performance of the graphics processor is increased by 35%, and the speed of the neural network engine is even faster by 40%. In addition, the M2 chip also has 50% more memory bandwidth than the M1. In addition to these impressive performance improvements, the M2 chip comes with many custom technologies and improved power efficiency, all of which are added to the completely redesigned MacBook Air and the new 13-inch MacBook Pro.
The Apple M2 chip integrates a total of 20 billion transistors, an increase of 25% compared to the M1 chip. The new transistors improve all aspects of the chip’s performance, including a memory controller that achieves a unified memory bandwidth of 100GB/s, which is as much as 50% higher than the M1 chip. And thanks to high-speed unified memory of up to 24GB, the M2 chip can handle larger and more complex tasks.
The central processing unit of the new chip uses a faster high-performance core and a larger cache, and the high-efficiency core has also been greatly increased, further improving performance. Therefore, the multi-threaded processing performance of the Apple M2 chip is 18% higher than that of the M1 chip. Tasks that require a lot of CPU power can be easily completed with very low power consumption. For instance, it will be ideal for creating music with rich sound effects or applying complex filter functions to photos. Compared with the latest 10-core PC notebook chips, the central processing unit of the M2 chip can achieve nearly twice the performance at the same power consumption level.
In addition, the M2 chip consumes only 1/4 the power of the aforementioned PC notebook chips at peak performance.
The M2 chip also uses Apple’s next-generation graphics processor with up to 10 cores, two more than the M1 chip. Thanks to the larger cache and higher memory bandwidth, the graphics performance of the 10-core graphics processor has been greatly improved, and the graphics performance at the same power consumption level is up to 25% higher than that of the M1 chip, and at the highest power consumption level, Its performance is up to 35% higher than that of the M1 chip. Compared to the integrated graphics processor of the latest PC notebook chips, the graphics processor of the M2 chip runs 2.3 times faster at the same power consumption level and requires only 1/5 the power consumption of the former to reach its peak level performance. The higher power consumption ratio of the M2 chip allows the system to achieve exceptional battery life while maintaining extremely low heat and noise, even when playing complex games or editing large RAW images.
