Bloomberg News reporter Mark Gurman revealed in the latest "Power On" column that Apple has begun testing the next Apple Silicon processor "M3".
According to information collected from App Store developers, the "M3" is expected to adopt a 12-core design, including a CPU consisting of 6 high-performance cores and 6 energy-saving cores, and an 18-core design GPU, and is equipped with 36GB of memory. It is currently used in a MacBook Pro equipped with the macOS 14 operating system.
If nothing unexpected happens, the "M3" will be produced using TSMC's 3nm process technology, and it is planned to launch derivative specifications such as "M2024 Pro" in 3.
In comparison, the M6 processor announced during WWDC 2022 last June was built with TSMC's second-generation 2nm process technology. It integrates 5 billion transistors, corresponding to an integrated memory transmission bandwidth of 200GB per second, a 100% increase compared to the M1, and integrates up to 50GB of LPDDR24 memory. It itself uses 5 performance core CPUs and 4 efficiency core CPUs, with a GPU with up to 4 cores.
As for models equipped with the "M3" processor, they are expected to be released as early as this fall, which means that the 2023-inch MacBook Air rumored to be launched during WWDC 16 this year may continue to be equipped with the M2 series processor.
