Apple announced its latest Apple M3 Series SoCs at its ‘Scary Fast’ event, the series includes the Apple M3, Apple M3 Pro, and Apple M3 Max chips, the company’s new ARM-based SoC for its Mac lineup. The M3 series is manufactured in a 3nm process and is the successor to the M2 series introduced earlier this year. It highlights its 3nm process technology, up to 92 billion transistors count, and offers up to 128 GB of fast LPDDR5 unified memory.
The Apple M3 chip family takes the Mac to new heights, thanks to an enhanced GPU and an innovative technology known as Dynamic Caching. This introduction also marks the debut of hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading on Mac for the first time.
The M3 series outshines the M1 series in rendering speeds, delivering up to 2.5 times faster performance comparatively. Its CPU performance cores and efficiency cores are 30% and 50% faster than that in the M1, respectively. By using just half the power, the CPU can match the M1 chip’s multithreaded performance and surge ahead with a 35% increase at peak performance.
Apple says the M3 GPU is power-efficient delivering the same performance as M1 while consuming nearly half the power, and can provide up to 65% more performance at its peak. The Neural Engine boasts a 60% faster compared to that in M1. Plus, the new media engine introduces AV1 decode support, ensuring more efficient and high-quality video streaming with extended battery life.
Apple M3 Series Chips (M3, M3 Pro, M3 Max)
There are a total of three chips in the Apple M3 family – M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. The M3 chip is a 10-core SoC consisting of four performance cores and four power-efficient cores featuring 25 billion transistors (5 billion more than the M2), 35% faster in terms of performance compared to that of M1, and support for up to 24 GB of unified memory. In addition, its 10-core GPU design, equipped with next-generation architecture, outshines the M1 by 65% in graphics performance.
The M3 Pro chip is a 12-core SoC featuring six performance cores and six power-efficient cores featuring 37 billion transistors. The CPU delivers a 30% faster single-threaded performance compared to that of M1 Pro and supports up to 36 GB of unified memory. In addition, its 18-core GPU comes with a 40% speed improvement in graphics performance over the M1 Pro.
On the other hand, the top-of-the-line M3 Max chip is a 16-core SoC featuring twelve performance cores and four power-efficient cores featuring a whopping 92 billion transistors, support for up to 128 GB unified memory, and delivers up to a remarkable 80% speed boost over M1 Max. Plus, the SoC packs two ProRes engines for efficient and high-quality video processing while its 40-core GPU is 50% faster than M1 Max in terms of graphics performance.
The Apple M3, Apple M3 Pro, and Apple M3 Max will power the new MacBook Pro and iMac models unveiled today. Expect the new MacBook Air equipped with M3 chips to be released next year i.e. 2024.
