According to Bloomberg, Apple is developing data center-grade processors meant primarily to serve inquiries from Apple Intelligence. Like many of its industry peers, the company is working with Broadcom to develop its AI accelerators. Yet, the details the news agency presents may indicate that Apple has bigger plans for its in-house data center hardware.
Apple's data center processor is reportedly codenamed Baltra; it was developed in partnership with Broadcom and is expected to be completed by 2027. All Broadcom-designed AI processors typically use systolic arrays of proprietary processing elements (usually tensor or matrix units) and HBM memory stacks. However, the report says that Apple is studying different configurations for its server processor, including models that have 'double, quadruple or eight times the number of main processing and graphics cores as today's M3 Ultra.'
