Apple at its ‘Scary fast’ event announced M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max the company’s new ARM-based SoC for the Mac, as the successor to the M2 series that was introduced earlier this year. It uses 3-nanometer process technology, and has up to 92 billion transistors. It offers up to 128GB of fast LPDDR5 unified memory.
Apple M3 family
The M3 family of chips features a faster and more efficient GPU, and introduces a new technology called Dynamic Caching, and brings hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading to Mac for the first time.
Rendering speeds are now up to 2.5x faster than on the M1 family of chips. The CPU performance cores and efficiency cores are 30 percent and 50 percent faster than those in M1, respectively. Together, these cores create a CPU that delivers the same multithreaded performance as M1 using as little as half the power, and up to 35 percent more performance at peak power.
The Neural Engine is 60 percent faster than the Neural Engine in the M1 family of chips. And, a new media engine now includes support for AV1 decode, providing more efficient and high-quality video experiences from streaming services to further extend battery life.
The M3 GPU is able to deliver the same performance as M1 using nearly half the power, and up to 65 percent more performance at its peak, said Apple.
Apple M3
The Apple M3 features 25 billion transistors — 5 billion more than M2. It has a 10-core GPU featuring the next-generation architecture that is 65 percent faster than M1 for graphics performance. The M3 has an 8-core CPU, with four performance cores and four efficiency cores, that is up to 35 percent faster than M1 for CPU performance. And it supports up to 24GB of unified memory.
Apple M3 Pro
The Apple M3 Pro has 37 billion transistors and an 18-core GPU. The GPU is up to 40 percent faster than M1 Pro. It supports unified memory up to 36GB. The 12-core CPU design has six performance cores and six efficiency cores, offering single-threaded performance that is up to 30 percent faster than M1 Pro.
Apple M3 Max
The Apple M3 Max has up to 92 billion transistors. The 40-core GPU is up to 50 percent faster than M1 Max, and support for up to 128GB of unified memory. The 16-core CPU features 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores, making it up to 80 percent faster than M1 Max. It has two ProRes engines.
Availability
The Apple M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max will power the new MacBook Pro and iMac that were introduced today. We can expect a new MacBook Air with M3 chips in 2024.