Apple officially announced its latest M-series processor family, M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max, on Monday at its October “Scary Fast” Halloween Eve product event.
These new chips are the first personal computer chips built using the TSMC 3nm process technology, which packs more transistors into a smaller space and improves speed and efficiency.
Apple says that the M3 processor family showcases the next-generation GPU that represents the biggest leap forward in graphics architecture ever for Apple silicon.
Besides introducing a new technology called Dynamic Caching, the GPU also brings new rendering features like hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading to Mac for the first time.
The new chips deliver up to 2.5x the speed of the M1 family of chips. Further, the CPU performance cores and efficiency cores are 30 percent and 50 percent faster, respectively, in comparison to M1 chips. Also, the Neural Engine displays a 60 percent boost in performance than the Neural Engine in the M1 family of chips. With the Apple M3, the new media engine adds support for AV1 video decode.
“Apple silicon has completely redefined the Mac experience. Every aspect of its architecture is designed for performance and power efficiency,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies.
The unified memory architecture of the Apple M3 allows up to 128GB of memory. Starting with the M3 chipset, it comes with an 8-core CPU and a 10-core GPU along with support for up to 24GB of unified memory.
Further, the M3 Pro has a 12-core CPU and an 18-core GPU with support for up to 36GB of unified memory. Lastly, the M3 Max offers a 16-core GPU and a 40-core GPU with up to 128GB of unified memory.
M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max processors will be available on the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the new iMac will use the M3 chip. Similarly, the 16-inch MacBook Pro variant will be available with either an M3 Pro or M3 Max processor.
