Upcoming M3 chips

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Coming from a highly reliable source. Looks like an extra 2 cpu and gpu cores in the M3 vs M2, which in turn has 2 extra cpu and gpu cores over the M1. IPC wise not much is different, seems like all the potential gains will be from the 3nm node and extra cores.

Seems like apple has essentially hit the limit with its IPC, and now gains can only really be seen due to the standard improvements in nodes or just adding more cores
 
There's no info about the clocks, IPC or performance (as expected, Apple's mouthpiece at Bloomberg won't reveal the good stuff :D).

TSMC's N3 is going to be about 50% denser than the N5P in M2. That gives Apple a lot to work with, My expectation is that the normal M3 will have ~30 billion transistors, performance cores are going to get about 25% bigger, and we may get more E cores, but they'll stick to 4 P cores. I expect clocks to remain in the 3.5-4.0 GHz range and most improvements in CPU/GPU to come from better IPC.

I also expect M3 to be based on A17 uarch rather than A16 (M1 was based on A14, M2 on A15, A16 was basically a rebranded A15 as TSMC didn't deliver 3nm on time. I think they'll skip an M-series chip based on A16).

IPC wise not much is different, seems like all the potential gains will be from the 3nm node and extra cores.

These are not exclusive. Denser nodes allow bigger and wider cores (more transistors) in the same die space, which is how you achieve better IPC. Increasing clocks isn't the only way you can use denser nodes for better performance.

This usually is Apple's chip design approach, they focus on uarch improvements when they go to a denser node along they have modest clock increases, modest die size shrinks and significant transistor count increases. Then on future iterations when the node matures they increase clocks more aggressively while making their uarch more efficient to compensate. This is the opposite of Intel's old tik/tok approach.
 
More cores are cool, but let’s stop also get more base memory, especially since it’s soldered.

That's how Apple gets to to pay the £££ for upgrades :D

I do really hope they allow 32GB for the base M3 chip rather than the current 24GB. Price of 16GB LPDDR5 chips are now quite reasonable so no reason for Apple to not offer it (other than the above).
 
That's how Apple gets to to pay the £££ for upgrades :D

I do really hope they allow 32GB for the base M3 chip rather than the current 24GB. Price of 16GB LPDDR5 chips are now quite reasonable so no reason for Apple to not offer it (other than the above).
Memory is so much cheaper than what they charge. £200 for 8GB is daylight robbery.
Hah no chance. £1.4k base model m3 air with 8gb around the corner for sure.
It’s crazy that people actually spend that. Having that much processing power but so little storage and memory really misses the mark.
 
Memory is so much cheaper than what they charge. £200 for 8GB is daylight robbery.

I do really hope they allow 32GB for the base M3 chip rather than the current 24GB. Price of 16GB LPDDR5 chips are now quite reasonable so no reason for Apple to not offer it (other than the above).

Their upgrade prices are robbery, that's how they make their margin. What they offer as an upgrade is determined by global prices, availability and how it affects the entire lineup.

A year ago there was no way to offer 32GB for the normal M2 while maintaining their margins without the 32GB M2 becoming more expensive than the 32GB M2 Pro, as the M2 would have needed two 16GB LPDDR5 chips, M2 Pro could use four much cheaper 8GB LPDDR5 chips. But now 16GB chips are comparable (per GB) to 8/12GB, they can offer it without it getting more expensive than the Pro lineup.

They probably still wouldn't do it to push customers towards the Pro lineup though.

for sure, the max limit has been increased to 36gb, odd number.

SK Hynix has 18GB LPDDR5 chips, two of these make sense.
 
Since there are no rumours about the studio refresh I imagine it will get the M3. I think this fall with TSMC N3 being ready for Apple they might refresh every product to the M3 lineup.
 
I wouldn't mind seeing them go to a slightly longer release cycle now - see more improvements in the chip design / performance than having to feel like they need to release so often.

I do hope they'll refresh the iMac prior to the Studio and I suspect they'll only refresh one Desktop at a time. Unless they come through with something for the Mac Pro too. I've not paid much, if any in the way of rumours, but looking forward to WWDC I hope they have some workshops on the lower level stuff, they've been fascinating the small parts we're seen at previous presentations.
 
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