Just when it looked like a competitor was going to outflank Apple in the processor wars, the Cupertino, Calif. company raised the bar once again with its new M3 chip series.
Just when it looked like a competitor was going to outflank Apple in the processor wars, the Cupertino, Calif. company raised the bar once again.
At a pre-recorded evening event streamed online Monday, Apple announced three new processors with better performance and power management capabilities than previous generations of its silicon.
In addition, it announced the chips would be in new models of its MacBook Pro premium laptops and iMac all-in-one desktop.
The new M3 processor has an 8-core CPU, 10-core GPU, and supports up to 24GB of unified memory. Apple says the M3’s CPU is 35% faster than its first silicon, the M1, and the M3’s GPU is 65% faster than the M1.
For Applistas looking for more power, Apple also introduced the M3 Pro with a 12-core CPU and 18-core GPU. It can address up to 36GB of unified memory, and its CPU is 20% faster and GPU 40% faster than the M1 Pro.
At the top end of the new chip line is the M3 Max with a 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU. It can address up to 128GB of unified memory, and its CPU is 30% faster and GPU 50% faster than the M1 Max.
The unified memory architecture of the M3 Max supports up to 128GB of fast, unified memory, making tasks once impossible on a laptop now achievable for professionals, according to Apple.
All three chips also have an upgraded neural engine, which Apple says is 60% faster than the one in the M1 series.
There might be a message in those Apple comparisons for owners of M2 MacBooks, contended Kevin Krewell, a principal analyst with Tirias Research, a high-tech research and advisory firm in San Jose, Calif.
“Apple continually compared the M3 against the M1 and the old Intel models. That means if you already have an M2 MacBook, it’s not worth the upgrade,” he told TechNewsWorld.Qualcomm’s Competing Chip
The Apple event comes on the heels of Qualcomm unveiling its Snapdragon X Elite platform, built on an Oryon processor with 12 cores and using one-third the power of Intel’s current best laptop.
At Qualcomm’s recent summit, the company demonstrated that the X Elite at 80w easily outperformed the 13-inch MacBook Pro with an M2 processor.
“At this point, it’s hard to do an apples-to-apples comparison on the chips, but the takeaway is that if the M3 is better than Qualcomm, it’s not going to be much better, and Qualcomm is going to be in pretty good shape,” Bob O’Donnell, founder and chief analyst with Technalysis Research, a technology market research and consulting firm, in Foster City, Calif.
