The release of the M1 processor was a milestone. Apple eventually migrated the Mac to its fast, low-power mobile processors, and the results were amazing. It was a tough act to follow – and after about a year and a half the M2 processor arrived with a (not unexpected) set of additional gains.
You can’t reinvent the wheel every time, and clearly the M2 was a conservative sequel to the M1, designed to keep the ball rolling. But now reports abound that the M3 is on the way – not year-end or early 2024, as you’d expect from the 18-month gap between the M1 and M2. , but very soonperhaps as early as late spring or early summer.
Surprise! It turns out that Apple may be more aggressive with its Mac processing master plan than we might have guessed in the first two years of Apple silicon.
Back to the chip cycle
The first two generations of Apple’s silicon Mac chips succeeded the iPhone chips of a previous generation. The M1 was based on the A14 and the M2 was based on the A15. Apple releases a new iPhone chip every year, but hasn’t done so with the M series…until now.
However, there is evidence to suggest that Apple didn’t really want it that way. The M2 debuted alongside the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro last June, but numerous reports from well-informed journalists such as Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman have suggested that the MacBook Air M2 was originally slated for late 2021 or very early. 2022. If that’s true, then Apple’s original plan was to ship the first M2 Macs about a year after the first M1 models. It didn’t work, but intention matters when we’re trying to guess what will happen next.
M3 as in nanometers
Apple’s chip supplier TSMC has been moving towards a new 3-nanometer chip process for some time. The A14 was built on a 5nm process and the A15 on a newer process that Apple calls 4nm, but which many chip nerds say is Really always 5nm. Meanwhile, the 3nm process (when it arrives) has reportedly been fully bought out by Apple for use in all of its chips.
(If you’re not a chip engineer, what you need to know is that smaller processes offer many advantages, both in terms of reduced power consumption and potential speed increase chips. The smaller the better.)
While it was long assumed that Apple’s first 3nm chips would be in the iPhone this fall, the M3 chip would be built on the process. This means that unlike the last two cycles, this time the Mac would be Go there first with new chip technology, ahead of the iPhone. It also suggests that the M3 could skip last fall’s A16 processor and share its composition more with the upcoming A17 chip.
Apple
All of this suggests that while Apple’s early silicon cycle rounds suggested that Apple’s approach was “let’s take an A chip and now make an M chip”, Apple’s chip development roadmap could be a bit smoother than that. If the M3 chip is built on the 3nm process, it is a step ahead of the iPhone. Would it also have the same CPU and GPU cores as the A17? Given the relatively small size of an upgrade from the A16 over the A15, maybe so. But that’s not a guarantee.
Start a new cycle
Bloomberg’s Gurman strongly suggested this week that Apple wanna Mac chip cycle should be annual like iPhone cycle. I don’t know if we have much evidence to support this yet, but it would certainly make sense for Apple to keep the M and A series in sync now that Apple has largely completed its Mac chip tr ansition.
But if Apple do moving to an annual chip update cycle for the Mac, I wouldn’t expect every new Mac model to receive an annual new chip update. In fact, we’ve seen hints of it before, as the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro received both M1 and M2 versions, but the iMac and Mac Studio are only available on M1 so far.
A trend is slowly emerging: Perhaps Apple’s laptops, which probably account for at least three-quarters of Mac sales, will continue to be updated on a yearly basis, with each new generation of chips. Desktop Macs, on the other hand, might only be updated every two years – Gurman’s report that a new 24-inch iMac model will arrive this fall with an M3 processor inside would confirm this. Imagine the Mac mini and Mac Pro getting an update in odd years, with the Mac Studio and iMac getting an update in even years.
We could see Apple decide to put its desktop Macs on longer cycles than its MacBooks.
Foundry
Of course, until the M3 officially arrives, we have no idea if these reports are accurate. And delays do happen, whether they’re due to larger supply chain issues (which really bit the Mac last year) or even delays at TSMC in getting their systems up and running. new chip processes. But as of now, it really does feel like Apple is about to get a lot more aggressive with the pace of its Mac chip updates, and that’s great news for Mac users.
