The launch of the M1 app is a significant milestone. Finally, Apple has moved the Mac to the fastest low-power mobile apps, and the results are amazing. They were hard to follow – about a year and a half later, the M2 processor (unexpectedly) arrived with additional gains.
You can’t reinvent the wheel every time, and the M2 clearly follows closely behind the M1 and is designed to get the ball rolling. But now reports abound that M3 is coming – not at the end of the year or early 2024, as you might expect from the 18-month gap between M1 and M2, but almostMaybe late spring or early summer.
a surprise! It turns out that Apple may be more aggressive in its Mac app master plan than we expected in Apple Silicon’s first two years.
Back in the chip cycle
The first two generations of Apple Silicon Mac chips were modeled after the previous generation of iPhone chips. The M1 is based on the A14, and the M2 is based on the A15. Apple releases a new iPhone chip every year, but it hasn’t done so yet with the M series.
However, there is evidence that Apple doesn’t really want that. The M2 debuted last June alongside the MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro, but several reports from well-sourced reporters like Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman indicated that the M2 MacBook Air was tentatively slated for late 2021 or early 2022. That’s right, Apple’s original plan was to ship the first M2 Max a year after the first M1 models. It didn’t work out, but intention matters when we’re trying to guess what’s going to happen next.
M3 in nanometers
Apple’s chip supplier, TSMC, is moving to a new 3nm chip process. The A14 is built on a 5nm process and the A15 on a new process that Apple calls 4nm, but that’s what many chip nerds say. In reality 5 more minutes. Meanwhile, the 3nm process (when it arrives) is said to have been completely bought out by Apple for use in all of its chips.
(Unless you’re a chip engineer, all you need to know is that smaller processes offer many advantages, including lower power consumption and a potential chip speed increase. Smaller is better.)
While it was long assumed that Apple’s first 3nm chips would be in the iPhone this fall, an M3 chip is said to be built into the process. This means that unlike the previous two cycles, this time Mac go first With the new chip technology – before the iPhone. This suggests that the M3 may bypass last fall’s A16 processor and share more of its architecture with the upcoming A17 chip.
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While the first two rounds of the Apple Silicon cycle suggested that Apple’s approach was “let’s take one chip and now make an M chip,” all this suggests that Apple’s chip development roadmap may be more fluid than that. If the M3 chip is built on a 3nm process, it will be a step ahead of the iPhone. Will it have the same CPU and GPU cores as the A17? The A16 is a relatively minor upgrade over the A15, and that may be the case. But it is not guaranteed.
A new cycle begins
Bloomberg’s Gorman strongly suggested Apple this week Likes The Mac chip cycle is yearly, just like the iPhone cycle. I don’t know if we have much evidence to back it up yet, but since Apple has pretty much completed the transition of its Mac chip, it certainly makes sense for Apple to keep the M and A series.
But if an apple Will do Switch to the Mac’s annual chip update cycle, and I don’t expect every new Mac model to get an annual update of a new chip. In fact, we’ve already seen hints of this because both the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro have M1 and M2 versions, but the iMac and Mac Studio are only available in M1.
Slowly a pattern is emerging: Apple’s laptops, which make up no less than three-quarters of Mac sales, are probably refreshed annually with each new generation of chips. Mac desktops, on the other hand, only get updated every year — the new 24-inch iMac model arriving this fall with an M3 processor supports that, according to Gurman. Imagine that the Mac mini and Mac Pro get the update in odd-numbered years, while the Mac Studio and iMac get updated in even-numbered years.
We could see Apple decide to put its desktop computers in longer cycles than its MacBooks.
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Of course, we won’t know if these reports are accurate until the M3 officially arrives. And there will be delays — whether from major supply chain issues (which really crippled the Mac last year) or delays at TSMC in getting its new chip operations up and running. But for now, Apple seems to be getting more aggressive with the pace of updates to its Mac chips, and that’s great news for Mac users.