Capping off a busy month for new processor announcements, Apple this week has announced a new generation of M-series Apple Silicon processors – and with it, a newly refreshed generation of MacBook Pros. Anchored by the new M3 series of processors, Apple has opted to launch most of the stack in a single go, announcing products based on the vanilla M3, and more powerful M3 Pro and M3 Max SoCs at the same time. Built on TSMC’s N3B process, Apple is looking to once again raise the bar on both CPU and GPU performance, as well as setting a new record for the number of transistors used in a single laptop SoC.
The launch of the new M3 chips goes hand-in-hand with new MacBook Pro laptops, as well as a refreshed 24-inch iMac. But as Apple isn’t making any external design or feature changes to any of these devices – they’re all the same dimensions with the same ports and parts as before – they are a straightforward update to the internals of these devices. As a result, the star of the show for these latest product launches are the new M3 family of SoCs, and the features and performance they bring.
With their latest generation of high-performance silicon for Macs (and, undoubtedly, high-end iPads), Apple is seemingly taking full advantage of the density and power improvements offered by TSMC’s N3B process. But at the same time, they are also changing how their SoCs are configured; the M3 Pro in particular is a significant departure from its predecessor. So although the M3 chips do not in and of themselves rise to the level of “groundbreaking”, there are some important changes here that we’ll be taking a look at.
