Apple is reportedly developing AI servers based on its own M-series processors and is evaluating NVLink Fusion technology for interconnects, according to The Information. The machines are expected to use M8 Ultra processors and arrive in 2029, the report claims.

For now, the usage of the NVLink Fusion platform is not formalized and has not been confirmed by either Apple or Nvidia — but an Apple decision to use it instead of competing solutions may have significantly broader market implications than just Apple using Nvidia hardware.

Apple looking for fast interconnects

Apple is reportedly considering at least two server configurations: a smaller machine equipped with two M8 Ultra processors and a higher-end version featuring four M8 Ultra system-on-chips. Although Apple has its own UltraFusion technology for stitching two high-end SoCs together seamlessly, it looks like the company does not have a proper solution for scale-up and scale-out connectivity of its processors, which is where Nvidia's NVLink Fusion comes into play. Apparently, Apple wants to use NVLink infrastructure, which includes not only an interconnection protocol, but also switches, chiplets that add NVLink connectivity, and a software stack, for its servers. The project was reportedly initiated around a year ago and was backed by John Ternus while he headed Apple's hardware engineering organization.

Apple already builds custom servers for Private Cloud Compute, which handle AI workloads too demanding for local execution on iPhones and Macs, The Information claims. Most of these machines use Apple's internally developed connectivity technologies, which are reportedly too slow and costly for large-scale commercial deployments, which is why Apple is looking elsewhere.

More than NVLink?

The Information specifically mentions Apple's need for connectivity technology suitable for large-scale deployments, although it does not explain exactly what this means architecturally. If the publication is referring to connecting multiple servers into larger clusters, this would normally be the job of scale-out technologies such as Ethernet or InfiniBand, rather than a scale-up fabric such as NVLink. Nvidia originally developed its NVLink fabric technology to scale-up performance of its accelerators, so the technology is optimized for accelerator-to-accelerator connectivity and enables a rack of Nvidia GPUs to function as a tightly coupled compute domain. There is a different implementation called NVLink-C2C, which is a coherent chip-to-chip interface for connecting CPUs to accelerators and CPUs to CPUs

Meanwhile, modern Apple M Pro and M Ultra processors are system-in-packages consisting of a CPU chiplet and a GPU/neural engine chiplet, which are stitched together using TSMC's SoIC-mH technology. If Apple continues to use this architecture (very likely), an M8 Ultra processor can be considered as a CPU and an accelerator. However, this raises the question of how Apple intends to connect M8 Ultra processors to NVLink and which components of the SiP would participate in the NVLink domain. One possibility is that Apple could expose the accelerator portion of M8 Ultra to NVLink through an NVLink Fusion chiplet, which effectively means it will treat it as an accelerator for a scale-up domain. Another possibility is that Apple is developing a different accelerator architecture for its servers, perhaps by simply placing the GPU/NPU chiplet onto a separate substrate/interposer and equipping it with its own memory, though there is currently no evidence that confirms such a design for a chip that is years away.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Apple is a member of the UALink Consortium, an organization overseeing development of industry-standard UALink accelerator-to-accelerator interconnections that supports up to 1,024 accelerators. While for now there is a limited choice of UALink switches, by 2029, there will be industry-standard switches offering different performance and capabilities, which makes the choice of NVLink as a scale-up fabric even stranger.

One possible explanation is that Apple is interested in considerably more than NVLink itself. NVLink Fusion is part of Nvidia's rack-scale and data center infrastructure architecture, which can combine NVLink scale-up connectivity with Nvidia's Spectrum-X Ethernet or Quantum-X InfiniBand scale-out networks, including switches equipped with co-packaged optics. Thus, Apple could potentially adopt Nvidia technology for both scale-up and scale-out connectivity instead of developing an entire data center networking stack of its own. This is merely speculation for now, but such an approach would effectively mean that Apple is building AI servers around significant portions of Nvidia's data center architecture while retaining its own processors and not using Nvidia accelerators. If this happens, this will be a testament that Nvidia is now setting de facto standards for AI data centers, no matter which AI accelerators and CPUs are used.

Burying the hatchet?

Without a doubt, Nvidia is a leading supplier of data center hardware, so it is logical for Apple to work with the company if the two companies are indeed working together on Apple's data center platform.

Apple and Nvidia are not exactly good partners. The feud between the two companies began in the early 2000s, when Steve Jobs accused Nvidia of infringing on Pixar's patents on which Nvidia responded that it owned more graphics IP than Pixar and therefore could sue the company. Later on, Apple and Nvidia had disagreements over GPU design decisions that the latter supplied to the former. However, then came 'Bumpgate' as Nvidia supplied Apple and other PC makers defective GPUs in 2007 – 2008, did not acknowledge the problem, and then resisted fully compensating Apple and other PC makers for their repair costs, which is when the relationship between the companies got especially dire. Apple continued to use Nvidia GPUs till 2014 or 2015, at which point it switched to AMD's Radeon, and then abandoned discrete third-party GPUs altogether.

More recently, Apple started to use Nvidia's hardware again. The latest Siri AI is primarily powered by Apple Foundation Models developed in collaboration with Google using Gemini technology. Server-side inference runs through Apple's Private Cloud Compute architecture, and many of the workloads are hosted on Nvidia Blackwell GPUs in Google Cloud. Yet, using Nvidia hardware in the cloud and adopting the company's technologies for your own platforms is a completely different thing.

We reported on the new Apple A20 Pro system-on-a-chip (SoC) for smartphones yesterday, an integral attraction within Apple’s first foldable, the iPhone Duo, and in the iPhone 18 Pro devices. Now the first A20 Geekbench 6 benchmark results are starting to pop up online, and they’re very impressive, particularly in single-core performance. If the result spotted by Longhorn is a typical one, the 4,719 single-core and 12,677 multi-core scores mean the new A20 is around 25% faster than its predecessor. Its single-core score can also make some of the best PC CPUs look anemic.

Apple’s official performance claims are interesting, as usual, but we’re always happy to see the third-party performance indicators start to emerge ahead of independent reviews. Heralding its new 2nm silicon yesterday, Apple might have actually understated the boost the A20 can deliver, with the official line about this “desktop-class” processor being the “fastest CPU in a smartphone,” and a claim that it is ‘just’ 20% faster than the previous gen. However, Geekbench isn’t the best indicator of real-world performance, and this is just a sample of one to sprinkle salt upon.

What are numbers without relevant comparisons, though? For more perspective on Apple’s newest silicon, which might also be thrown into a new Neo laptop (or desktop) in the coming months, check out the table below.

Above, we’ve pitted the Apple A19 Pro from last year’s iPhone 17 Pro as the second comparison column entrant. Apple has worked on multiple angles to deliver improvements over last year. It says that it has both new super-cores and efficiency cores in play. Then there’s the refined 2nm process and the faster clocks, too.

For some wider context, we’ve also tabulated one of Apple’s newest M5 computer chips, a modern Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite X2 laptop chip, and the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, for a fun desktop PC angle. Less fun is the comparison with the Asus Zephyrus G16 2024 laptop I’m using now, with an AMD Ryzen AI HX 370 chip. Its Geekbench 6 scores of roughly 2,800 / 14,500 are easily outclassed by Apple’s new smartphone processor in 1T tests, but retain a little dignity by winning by ~1,800 points in nT tests.

Apple is opening up pre-orders for its new iPhones with A20 silicon shortly, with retail release on Friday, September 18. It usually lifts review embargoes a few days before retail. We should therefore see a broader range of benchmarks and tests from good sources in the coming week.

Apple has today unveiled its next-generation M6 Apple silicon chip, as well as a powerful M5 Ultra. The new chips will debut in new versions of its Mac Mini and Mac Studio, respectively, available to pre-order from today.

The M6 is Apple's first chip on a 2-nanometer process, utilizing a 12-core CPU with two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores. The chip also features a 12-core GPU and a 12-core GPU featuring neural accelerators, alongside a "Dual 16-core Neural Engine." The top version of the chip has 170GB/s of memory bandwidth.

That dual 16-core neural engine means that there are indeed two neural engines. There's a connection between the engines, allowing them to run one model quickly across both, or two separate models independently.

The M5 Ultra is Apple's first chip using its UltraFusion technology to form a quad-die architecture (The M5 Max chips it is connecting both used two dies). The chip goes up to 36 cores on the CPU and up to 80 cores on the GPU, with 1.2TB/S of unified memory bandwidth, which Apple says is 50% higher than the M3 Ultra. Apple also claims the 36-core CPU with 12 super cores and 25 performance cores will offer "up to 1.25x higher single-threaded performance and up to 1.3x higher multithreaded performance than M3 Ultra."

The M5 Ultra has a 32-core neural engine, but this is different from the dual 16-core neural engine on the M6. Because the M5 Ultra uses a pair of M5 Max chips over UltraFusion, the 32 cores across the dies to run two models in parallel for increased performance.

Both M6 and M5 Ultra feature GPUs with neural accelerators and their fastest cores, marking a leap forward for Apple's graphics processors when it comes to AI.

Apple users who have been maxxing out previous versions of the Mac Mini will be capped at 32GB of memory on the Mac Mini with M6, like a choice the company made due to the component shortage that has been affecting the entire industry. If you want 64GB like the M4 Pro, you'll need the M5 Pro model. But the M5 Ultra in the Mac Studio won't have that problem, with Apple offering up to 512GB of unified memory on that chip.

M6 also features updates to hardware-accelerated ray tracing, dynamic caching, and the shader core, which the company claims will allow for faster rendering and higher frame rates in games.

Mac Mini and Mac Studio

The new Mac Mini and Mac Studio aren't seeing any design changes, though there are substantial internal changes. Both systems are available for pre-order today, but won't arrive to customers and in retail stores until September 22.

Besides the M6 version of the Mac Mini, there will also be versions with M5 Pro. Both models will be bumped to Wi-FI 7 and Bluetooth 6, as well as 2.5Gb Ethernet (up from 1Gb), with a 10Gb option available as an upgrade. The Mac Mini also supports genlock via USB-C, synchronizing displays and cameras to prevent video drift during broadcasts.

For those working with AI, Thunderbolt 5 on the M5 Pro Mac Mini will allow customers to run clusters for on-device models.

The Mac Mini with M6 will start at $899, while the M5 Pro option will begin at $1,699 (each drops $100 for education pricing). Given that the Mac Mini with M4 started at $599, it's seeing substantial price hikes here.

The Mac Studio will come with M5 Max or the new M5 Ultra chip, and Apple is positioning it for on-device AI. It will now offer up to six Thunderbolt 5 ports with support for as many as eight displays. Like the Mac Mini, it's also getting Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 with Apple's N1 chip, which debuted in the iPhone 17 lineup. Like the Mac Mini, the Mac Studio also supports genlock for perfectly synced video.

The Mac Studio with M5 Max will start at $2,499 ($2,299 with an education discount), and the M4 Ultra model will start at an eye-watering $5,499 ($5,099 with an education discount).

Both systems will be compatible with macOS 27 Golden Gate, including Siri AI and refinements to the Liquid Glass design introduced in macOS 26 Tahoe.

Our local AI explorations in 2026 have so far focused on two main platforms: Nvidia’s GB10, as seen in the DGX Spark and Dell Pro Max with GB10, and AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395, aka Strix Halo, as seen in the Corsair AI Workstation 300 and the Ryzen AI Halo. We’ve generally favored GB10 systems for these kinds of local AI development sandboxes. Their solid all-around performance and broad AI software compatibility make them easy to love, even if raw LLM inference throughput isn’t that high.

But Apple’s Mac Studio is another compelling option for local AI trailblazers who want systems with large unified memory pools, powerful GPUs, and high memory bandwidth to enable faster tokens-per-second throughput than either GB10 or Strix Halo can provide. And until someone builds another unified memory SoC with a memory bus as wide as what Apple uses for its Max and Ultra chips, Apple Silicon is, in fact, the only game in town for more memory bandwidth from a chip of this design.

Why focus so much on memory bandwidth for local LLM performance to begin with? To keep it very short, the decode phase of LLM inference is virtually always sequential. Every output token (starting with the first one generated as part of the prefill process) has to be run through every layer in a model in order to generate the next token, and so all the active model weights in a layer have to be streamed to the GPU from its memory as the token makes its way through each one.

Because the amount of computation required for each individual token at each layer is tiny, the speed of the entire decode process basically becomes dependent on how fast those model weights can be streamed in from GPU memory. That makes systems with large memory pools (for holding large models) and high memory bandwidth (for streaming those model weights to the GPU) appealing, and Apple Silicon is the only platform that lets you have both characteristics at a (relatively) reasonable cost.

Apple’s last Mac Studio refresh was in March 2025 and marked the introduction of two versions of the system. The higher-end version uses the M3 Ultra SoC with 819GB/s of memory bandwidth across both the 28-CPU-core, 60-GPU-core mode and the 32-CPU-core, 80-GPU-core model.

The M4 Max version of the Mac Studio encompasses two versions with greater divergence in specs than just core counts. The base M4 Max includes a 14-core CPU (10 performance cores and four efficiency cores) with 410GB/s of memory bandwidth, and it can be upgraded to a 16-core CPU (12 performance cores and four efficiency cores) with 546GB/s of memory bandwidth.

We reviewed both of these systems at launch, but Apple generously lent us another M4 Max with the 16-core CPU, 40-core GPU, and 128GB of memory for LLM-specific tests. At the time, the price of that system was $3,699 or so, close to the DGX Spark’s $3,999 list price.

But as the RAMpocalypse has rolled on, the Mac Studio has become more limited in its configuration options and harder to find in stock. The M4 Max version we tested now tops out at 64GB of RAM, and lead times for that system are over two months out. Regardless, it’s the most comparable system that Apple has for the DGX Spark and GB10 platform more generally, at least back when dollar-for-dollar meant something in this market.

Before we get into performance results, we wanted to dig into the nitty-gritty of the M4 Max’s 40-core GPU, but Apple doesn’t share much (if any) detailed architectural information on its GPUs, including the number of shader ALUs that make up each GPU core, so it’s hard to directly compare the M4 Max to GB10 or the Radeon 8060S in the Ryzen AI Max+ 395.

The Radeon 8060S on board Strix Halo has 40 RDNA 3.5 compute units, each with 64 shader ALUs for a total of 2,560. AMD clocks the 8060S high, at 2900MHz, to achieve its roughly 14.8 TFLOPS of peak FP32 vector math.

Meanwhile, GB10 has 48 Blackwell SMs with 128 shader ALUs each for 6,144 total CUDA cores, and it too clocks relatively high, at 2450MHz in our testing. It offers a whopping theoretical 30 TFLOPS of FP32 vector compute.

Way back in the day when Apple first revealed the M1 GPU, however, the company disclosed that each core encompassed 128 execution units. Assuming that the same organization has carried through to current Apple GPUs, the 40-core M4 Max GPU would have 5,120 execution units or shader ALUs. That provides an idea of the scale of the GPU, at least, though without knowing clock speeds, we’re hesitant to speculate further about peak FLOPS or other theoretical performance measures.

Apple also only provides raw memory bandwidth figures for the M4 Max, but we can do some back-of-the-napkin math to surmise that the chip likely uses LPDDR5X-8533 on a 512-bit bus to achieve its 546 GB/s of rated memory bandwidth, twice as wide as both GB10 and Strix Halo. The lower-end M4 Max likely uses LPDDR5X-6400. In turn, the M3 Ultra likely uses a 768-bit-wide bus with LPDDR5X-8533 across both of its variants.

We covered the design of the Mac Studio in detail in our initial review, but it’s worth a quick tour to re-familiarize yourself with it. The top and sides of the system are largely featureless, save for an inlaid black Apple logo up top. The front panel has two 10Gbps USB Type-C ports and a UHS-II SD card reader.

The Studio’s thermal design uses a clever intake system that draws in air from vents around the system’s circular foot before exhausting it through a vent at the back of the chassis.

The M4 Max Studio we tested has a whopping four Thunderbolt 5 ports on its back panel with support for data rates up to 120Gbps. Although we’re not testing it today, you can enable RDMA over Thunderbolt 5 for low-latency clustering of Mac Studios using utilities like Exo. These ports also support Thunderbolt displays or DisplayPort 2.1 Alt Mode.

This system also has two USB 3 ports running at 5Gbps, 10Gb Ethernet, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a headphone jack, so it’s got all the connectivity you could practically want out of a compact desktop in 2026.

With those basics out of the way, let’s get to testing.

To test LLM inference performance, we once again turn to llama.cpp, which includes native Metal/MLX support on Apple Silicon when built from source. We used the llama-benchy project as our benchmarking harness.

We tested three models of various memory footprints and architectures: Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B, a recent mixture-of-experts model; Gemma 4 12B, a small dense model, and OpenAI’s gpt-oss-120b, a large mixture-of-experts model. We used Unsloth’s four-bit quantizations of these models for our testing.

Out of the gate with Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B, the Mac Studio delivers prompt processing speeds that beat Strix Halo but are still behind GB10, especially with longer contexts.

Flip over to the throughput results, and the M4 Max pulls ahead of both GB10 and Strix Halo, turning in higher tokens-per-second throughput than both those systems at all context depths.

But despite having double the memory bandwidth of GB10 and Strix Halo on paper, the real-world improvement in token throughput on the M4 Max is just 25% on Qwen 3.6-35B-A3B. That’s certainly welcome, but it’s not nearly the speedup you might expect with twice the memory bandwidth on tap.

The dense Gemma 4 12B, on the other hand, really seems to let the Mac Studio’s bandwidth advantage shine. Tokens-per-second throughput scales more linearly with memory bandwidth with this model, and so the Mac Studio delivers a 1.8X increase in throughput over GB10 and a 2.26X increase over Strix Halo.

But prompt processing speeds are only in line with (or even slightly worse than) Strix Halo here, which isn’t a fantastic result for latency if that’s important to your application.

Finally, we’ll look at gpt-oss-120b. Prompt processing again lands between Strix Halo and GB10, and tokens-per-second throughput is far higher than with either of those systems. But the Mac Studio’s tokens-per-second throughput is, on average, 1.5x higher than GB10 and 1.6x higher than Strix Halo, despite its much higher memory bandwidth. Those are still impressive leads, but they show that memory bandwidth is just one component in judging the performance of an inference pipeline.

On the whole, our LLM inference testing shows that the M4 Max GPU can generate many more tokens per second than competing systems with large unified memory pools, but a memory bandwidth specification alone isn’t a good proxy for delivered performance. The actual boost you get from the M4 Max in LLM inference is highly dependent on the architecture of the model you want to run, so real-world benchmarking is still important.

Image generation performance

LLMs aren’t the only AI workload that one might want to run locally. Image and video generation also matter, and the performance of these diffusion models is generally bound by the compute throughput of the underlying GPU.

Running our Flux.2 Klein image generation test on the Mac Studio initially failed due to an apparent lack of GPU support for the FP8 data type that the ComfyUI workflow uses by default.

We were able to modify the ComfyUI workflow to use the base FP16 version of Flux.2 Klein on the Mac Studio, but that initial compatibility issue shows that you might not enjoy as smooth an image or video generation experience on Apple Silicon as you might on GB10 or even Strix Halo.

Compatibility issues aside, the M4 Max GPU requires even more time than the already pokey Radeon 8060S in this image generation test. Nvidia has repeatedly demonstrated the DGX Spark running as an image and video generation companion for Macs in its demos this year, and this result demonstrates why that pairing might make sense.

Image generation performance with the latest M5 GPU and its dedicated Neural Accelerators for matrix math might be better here, but we don’t have an M5-powered system at hand to compare against the M4 Max. Apple does claim that the M5 Max is “up to 3.8x faster” at image generation than the M4 Max, so take heed if this workload is important to you.

General CPU performance

We already gauged the CPU performance of the M4 Max in our initial review, but we wanted to stack it up against Strix Halo and GB10 directly to see how it performs against these popular platforms in the AI space. To establish a CPU performance ballpark for the M4 Max, we fired up the just-released Geekbench 7 and got to it.

In this benchmark, the M4 Max turns in a whopping 27% advantage in single-core performance and a 21% boost in multi-threaded performance versus the Ryzen Max+ 395’s 16-core, 32-thread Zen 5 x86 CPU.

And comparing Arm to Arm, the M4 Max delivers a 39% single-threaded advantage over the Cortex-X925 “big” core on the Nvidia GB10, along with a 22% advantage in multi-threaded work.

Those results are seriously impressive on their own, but Apple has even more advanced CPU cores in its arsenal now on board the M5 series. We’d expect even larger advantages in general use from those chips.

Geekbench is fine for a quick synthetic test, but I wanted to make sure that its results held in a real-world task, so I compiled the CPU-only version of llama.cpp from source across all three of our test systems using the Clang 21 compiler running across all available physical cores.

With all 16 of its CPU cores in the game, the M4 Max finishes this compilation job in about 37 seconds, anywhere from 33% to 37% faster than the Nvidia and AMD competition here. That’s even faster than the M4 Max’s Geekbench multi-threaded performance delta would suggest.

At least going by these high-level tests, Apple’s CPU performance among SoCs with large unified memory pools is best-in-class, and by a wide margin. And again, that’s with the last-gen M4, not the latest M5.

When judging the efficiency of Apple Silicon or any other platform, one might be tempted to just glance at a power meter like a Kill-a-Watt with the system under load and leave it at that, but instantaneous power draw isn’t the right metric when judging the efficiency of a system for a given task.

Task energy (the amount of power consumed over time) is much more informative. A system that needs a lot of power but finishes a task quickly may consume less task energy and is therefore more efficient than one that consumes a moderate amount of power but takes much longer to finish a job.

To judge inference efficiency, we set up a fixed-length workload with gpt-oss-120b using llama.cpp and llama-benchy: first processing a 2048-token prompt against a 32768-token context depth, then generating 1024 output tokens. We chose that context depth to ensure that our test ran long enough to collect useful data. We recorded this data in watt-hours so that it reflects both energy consumed and time to completion.

At least in this synthetic workload, the M4 Max is more efficient than Strix Halo, but the sheer prompt-processing speed of GB10 lets it finish much faster and use less total power than the Mac Studio does, even though it’s outputting fewer tokens per second in the decode stage.

This test once again suggests that fixating on tokens-per-second throughput alone is perhaps not ideal for judging a system’s inference performance. An ideal LLM inference system would have both high prompt processing speeds and high tokens-per-second throughput for the shortest possible inference turn.

We’re curious how Apple’s latest M5 Max GPU would perform on this workload, as the company claims big gains on prefill compared to the M4 Max and has given that chip even higher memory bandwidth than the M4 Max. If that’s true, the combination of fast prefill and high tokens-per-second on decode would likely make the M5 Max competitive with GB10, if not an outright leader here.

We also gauged idle and load noise levels of these systems to see what it’s like to share space with them. For reference, the noise floor in our testing environment is about 32.6 dBA. We measure sound pressure levels at a distance of 18” from these systems to approximate what it’s like to work with them on top of a desk.

The Mac Studio is impressively quiet both at idle and under load. It barely raises the noise level in our testing environment at idle, and under load, its fans are barely perceptible. Practically any other noise you make or hear in your space will be louder. This is superlative performance.

Our time with a 128GB M4 Max Mac Studio demonstrates why these systems have been so popular among local AI trailblazers. For starters, the spec we tested has an incredibly potent 16-core CPU that’s leagues ahead of both Nvidia’s GB10 and AMD’s Ryzen AI Max+ 395 in both single-threaded and multi-threaded performance.

The massive memory bandwidth advantage of the 40-core GPU configuration of the M4 Max versus Strix Halo and GB10—546 GB/s vs 273 GB/s—also translates directly to higher tokens-per-second throughput in local LLM workloads. The M4 Max’s LLM inference performance is by far the highest of any unified memory platform we’ve tested.

But our tests demonstrate that there’s much more to delivered performance than that raw bandwidth figure. Depending on the model you choose, you might see the M4 Max generate as few as 27% more tokens per second or as many as 82% more TPS than an Nvidia GB10 box, at least with the llama.cpp inference engine.

This result emphasizes that you can’t just eyeball memory bandwidth and conclude that twice the bandwidth means twice as many tokens per second for LLM inference. Testing actual workloads remains essential.

And the Mac Studio doesn’t totally wipe the floor with the competition in our tests. For work like image generation, the Nvidia GB10 GPU still holds a large advantage over the M4 Max. Apple claims this workload will perform significantly better on the most recent M5 Max with its latest GPU architecture.

Beyond its impressive raw performance with LLMs and in general processing tasks, the Mac Studio is a master class in industrial design. It looks distinctly classy on a desk, and its cooling design keeps it incredibly quiet. Under load, it’s barely louder than the Nvidia GB10-powered Dell Pro Max and Ryzen AI Halo are at idle. And when the Studio itself is idling, it’s practically silent. This level of performance in such a compact, quiet, and refined chassis is incredibly impressive.

There’s one major asterisk, though: the ongoing RAMpocalypse means that even if you do want to use a Mac Studio as a foundation for your local LLMs, these systems are no longer available in the configuration that we tested.

A Studio with the high-end M4 Max as seen in this review currently tops out at 64GB of RAM for $5299, and the M3 Ultra version tops out at 96GB (with an even higher 819GB/s of memory bandwidth) for the same price. But neither of these configurations are available from stock, and lead times for both are about two months out, meaning that you practically can’t buy a Mac Studio new right now.

If you really want to try out local AI on Apple Silicon with a large memory pool to match, the best current option may be a MacBook Pro with an M5 Max inside, which is still readily available from stock, still allows you to get up to 128GB of RAM, and benefits from Apple’s latest GPU architecture with dedicated Neural Accelerators for matrix math operations.

But depending on your SSD choice, a 128GB M5 Max MacBook Pro with the highest-end 16-core CPU and 40-core GPU is still a $7K to $10K system today. Even in today’s world of rising prices for access to frontier models, that’s a lot of tokens from the cloud – and, almost assuredly, more intelligent ones – than anything you can get from a single 128GB system from any vendor.

But if you’re dead-set on a single Apple Silicon system with the most memory possible, and you want it now in order to ride the local AI wave, a maxed-out M5 Max MacBook Pro is your only ticket at the moment. Given the refinement and flexibility of the Mac Studio as a desktop or server, we can only hope Apple brings that chip to this system, too.

Apple's planned M7 Ultra chip is being designed to support up to 1.5 TB of unified memory and to push AI performance toward the class of Nvidia's Blackwell accelerators, according to a new Bloomberg report published by Mark Gurman. But whether the lofty top memory config can ship at all will depend on the state of the memory market, and the part isn't expected until 2028. The same report says Apple has compressed its Mac silicon timeline, taping out the M7 roughly six months after the M6.

We've already heard that Apple plans to release a base M6 chip this fall for entry-level Macs, then skip the Pro, Max, and Ultra versions of that generation and move straight to the M7 line. However, Gurman now reckons that we'll see a base M7 in the first half of 2027, M7 Pro and M7 Max at the end of 2027, and the M7 Ultra in 2028. Apple reportedly began taping out the M7 about six months after it started the same process for the M6, which is what has enabled the company to pull the schedule forward.

The 1.5 TB target for the M7 Ultra is roughly twice the capacity Apple has planned for the M5 Ultra, per Gurman, who tied the configuration directly to memory availability. Apple already pulled the 128GB Mac Studio this year over supply constraints as DRAM prices climbed, and a 1.5 TB part would call for far more of the same scarce, high-cost memory.

Apple's current M3 Ultra already reaches 819 GB/s of memory bandwidth by fusing two Max dies, and it's the Ultra tier, not the base chips, that carries the heaviest local-AI workloads. Gurman describes the M7 Ultra as a large step up in AI performance rather than stated parity with Nvidia's data-center silicon. "I'm told the processor dramatically upgrades AI performance, bringing it closer to the class of dedicated AI accelerators such as Nvidia Corp.'s Blackwell," Gurman wrote in his report.

Apple is also preparing an AI server built on the M5 Ultra under the code name J246 for deployment soon, with a second server chip based on the M7 Ultra planned for 2029, according to the report. The 2028 generation, which includes an M8 chip code-named Soko and a high-end Mac part called Cardinal, moves to a 1.4nm process. That aligns with TSMC's A14 node, which the foundry has scheduled for mass production in the second half of 2028.

None of the dates or specifications have been confirmed by Apple.

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that Apple has agreed to work with Intel to “design and build” chips in the United States, posting the claim to Truth Social before either company confirmed any arrangement. Apple and Intel didn’t respond to initial requests for comment from Reuters, and neither has issued a statement acknowledging a finalized deal.

Trump says the deal is part of his administration’s push to reshore semiconductor manufacturing, writing that the U.S. needs to build its chips domestically and that he "decided to help Intel because we need to design and build our Chips right here in America.” He credited earlier government intervention for drawing Nvidia and Elon Musk's TeraFab project to Intel's foundry.

Apple already designs its own silicon and has done so since it dropped Intel processors from its products in 2020. Any arrangement here would purely be a foundry deal, with Intel acting as a contract manufacturer for chips Apple designs in-house. It wouldn’t return Apple to Intel-designed processors, and it certainly wouldn’t displace TSMC from Apple's flagship products.

The logic behind any such deal for Apple would be simple supply diversification; the company remains dependent on TSMC, whose leading-edge capacity is being absorbed by AI customers, including Nvidia and AMD. Placing a lower-volume part on a second source reduces single-foundry exposure without touching the iPhone and high-end M-series lines that rely on TSMC's most advanced nodes.

We’ve known about much of this for a little while now. Reporters caught wind of a preliminary deal last month, following discussions that ran for more than a year. Before that, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and GF Securities outlined the likely scope: Apple's M7 SoC built on Intel's 18A-P process, powering the MacBook Air and entry-level iPad Pro, with mass production targeted for late 2027.

Those two product tiers accounted for roughly 20 million units in 2025, with annual shipments expected to settle between 15 million and 20 million — significant for a new foundry customer, but small enough to leave TSMC's revenue mix intact. Reporting has also suggested that Apple's A21 iPhone chips will move to Intel's 14A node around 2028, but none of this has been confirmed by Apple or Intel.

Trump's announcement comes just two days after Intel said its 18A-P process had entered risk production, announced at the VLSI Symposium in Honolulu. The node is the first performance-enhanced version of 18A, and Intel claims it delivers 9% higher performance at the same power, or 18% lower power at the same performance, while staying design-rule compatible with 18A so customers can reuse existing IP. CEO Lip-Bu Tan told investors last month that he expects multiple foundry commitments to close in the second half of 2026.

Intel has yet to confirm a single leading-edge customer for 18A, and any commitment from Apple would be a best-case scenario in terms of securing the validation the company both desperately wants and needs. The U.S. government holds a 10% stake in Intel, and its shares rose as much as 9% in premarket trading on the news, extending a run that has lifted the stock 464% over the past 12 months to a market cap of $608.7 billion.

Sources close to both Apple and Intel have said that the two companies have reached a preliminary agreement for Intel to manufacture processors for Apple. According to The Wall Street Journal, the two parties have been in talks for over a year, and they’ve been finalizing a formal deal over the past few months. Apple is reportedly looking for alternative fabs to TSMC, as it wants to diversify its supply chain in the midst of ongoing chip shortages, and it seems that this latest development is a confirmation of this report.

It’s currently unclear which chips the U.S. semiconductor company will be making for the largest consumer electronics firm in the world, but it previously made the x86 processors used in Macs and MacBooks from 2006 to 2023. Intel also had the chance to build the A-series chips that Apple used for the iPhone and iPad, but it fumbled the opportunity — with Tim Cook complaining to TSMC founder Morris Chang, “Intel just does not know how to be a foundry.”

Intel apparently learned its lesson, though, as Apple was reportedly considering Intel’s 18A process for its entry-level M-series chips as early as November of last year. Even before this, the two companies were already in discussions about a potential investment into the chip maker, something that President Donald Trump alluded to in early 2026. Aside from Apple, Intel has also received a $5-billion investment from Nvidia and that the two are partnering to develop an x86 RTX SoC for PCs. Elon Musk also tapped Intel for his TeraFab project, which will use the company’s 14A process to make AI chips.

These developments are excellent news for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who has been working hard to put the company back on track after former CEO Pat Gelsinger announced disastrous results in July 2024. It has also caused the company’s stock price to skyrocket, hitting a record high of $126.23 at the time of writing and beating its former peak during the dot-com boom of 2000. But we'll have to wait for confirmation from the two companies — as neither has officially commented on this news yet — to learn the details of this groundbreaking deal.

Apple is reportedly talking with Intel and Samsung to produce processors for the company as it’s grappling with a shortage of chips for its latest products. According to Bloomberg, Cupertino has had multiple early-stage discussions with Team Blue, while some key Apple executives have also visited a Samsung plant that’s still in development — likely its Taylor, Texas, fab, which is set to start risk production this year.

None of the talks have resulted in any orders, so far, the report states. There have been concerns about using non-TSMC tech in Apple products, especially as it has been producing chips for the iPhone since the A8 used in the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. However, the AI infrastructure build-out is negatively affecting the company, with Apple CEO Tim Cook conceding that it’s constrained by TSMC’s supply of advanced chips. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said that his company has dethroned the consumer electronics giant as TSMC’s number one customer, and even alluded that Apple might have to pay more for its chips. But even before this, Cupertino has reportedly been considering using Intel’s 18A process to build future M-series chips, especially as global geopolitical events are threatening the stability of the global supply chain.

If we look at Apple’s history, both Samsung and Intel have closely worked with the company for years. The first iPhone, all the way to the iPhone 5S, was powered by Samsung chips, while Macs and MacBooks used x86 Intel processors from 2006 until they were replaced by Apple silicon in 2023. If successful, these talks would resume Apple’s partnership with one (or both) of the companies.

This would be a win for Intel as it’s looking to land a major customer for its foundry business — something that it fumbled in 2011 when Cupertino first approached it for its custom chip needs. A move like this could also help bolster Samsung’s foundry business, as it sits at a distant second place when compared to TSMC. At the same time, it would reduce Apple’s risk of relying on a single supplier for the majority of its advanced chip supply. Even though TSMC’s Arizona plant is ramping up production and it’s estimated that it will deliver 100 million chips for Cupertino this year, it is just a fraction of Apple’s demands, with the majority of its advanced SoCs still expected to come from Taiwan.

Tim Cook has been well aware of the situation with TSMC for years now. He even said in a 2022 all-hands company meeting, “Regardless of what you may feel or think, 60% coming out of anywhere is probably not a strategic position.” This was likely highlighted with the AI-driven chip shortage. “The primary constraint is the availability of the advanced nodes our SoCs are produced on, not memory,” the Apple CEO said during the company’s latest earnings call. “I believe it will take several months to reach supply-demand balance.”

But even if Apple were to strike a deal with both Intel and Samsung today, it will take some time for production to ramp up, and consumers won’t feel its effect for several months, if not a couple of years.

Apple is 50 years old. The consumer tech giant, famous for the iPhone, AirPods, and, yes, its Mac laptops and desktops, has a larger footprint than ever. It also now encompasses TV production, music streaming apps, a massive App Store, and even a $599 system for the masses, the MacBook Neo. But all of that is rooted in a tradition of hobbyist computing, starting with the company's first product: the Apple-1.

Apple Computer Inc. was founded in 1976 as a partnership between Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne (of Atari fame, who was at Apple very briefly and worked on documentation). The company was built around the Apple-1, designed by Wozniak, and officially incorporated in Cupertino, California, in January 1977.

In retellings of the Apple legend, Wozniak was the true engineer, who was working at HP at the time. Jobs had an interest in electronics (and was reportedly pretty good at soldering at his job at Atari), but he was more of a marketing guy.

Either way, the pair, along with the early team they built, didn't have a company based on lifestyle – at least not yet. It was based in the hobbyist PC space. The Apple-1 came without a case, a keyboard, or a power supply, but did include a MOS Technology 6502 microprocessor and four kilobytes of memory. If you wanted to run Integer BASIC, you needed to do it on a cassette. Only about 200 were ever made, mostly for Byte Shop in nearby Mountain View.

At the time, the Apple-1 delivered a surprising amount of convenience for personal computing. Even though you still had to bring many components, the board was built and tested. Wozniak would show it off at the Homebrew Computer Club in Silicon Valley, to acclaim.But it was the Apple II that brought Apple's computers to the masses, assembling everything together, including the keyboard and case. You would use a television to serve as the screen. Heck, BASIC was even stored in memory. The Apple II was an iconic beige box that would be popularized by two further advancements in computing: a floppy disk drive and VisiCalc, an early spreadsheet program, which boosted its popularity.

There would be many variations on the Apple II, including the ill-fated Apple III, the upgraded Apple IIe, and the Lisa, the first commercially available PC with a GUI and mouse (inspired by work at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center, such as the Xerox Alto), which was quite expensive at $9,995.

But in 1984, following an internal power struggle, a second computing group within Apple revealed the Macintosh (later the Macintosh 128K), bringing forward the idea of the "all-in-one" PC, which included a monitor. There would be many variations in the Mac line, but they'd become popularized again in 1998, when Jobs, back from his exile from the company from 1985 through 1997, announced the iMac G3, designed by Jony Ive, in Bondi Blue. That would be followed by multiple colorways on the portable iBook laptops.

There would be hits (the iMac G4, with a modern design between a lamp and a flower) and misses. The Power Mac G4 Cube was a gorgeous machine with cosmetic issues in the injection-molded plastic and cooling issues thanks to its fanless design. The press release about Apple suspending production lives on on its website.

In 2001, Apple released the iPod, promising "1,000 songs in your pocket." The third-gen iPod, in 2003, added support for Windows, helping propel it to be one of the most popular consumer devices of all time. In 2007, Apple would launch the iPhone, which would take over the American smartphone market, become the company's largest focus and flagship product, and introduce the App Store, a huge business success for the company, as well as other services like iCloud, Apple Music, and Apple Pay. (The iPhone would ultimately lead to the death of Flash and the headphone jack on phones, but change the way many people use devices forever.)

But the next biggest hit would be the MacBook Air. By this time, Apple was firmly in its Intel era. Sure, it was extremely expensive when it launched in 2008, starting at $1,799 with an 80GB HDD and a 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (a 64GB SSD was an upgrade option!). But when Jobs pulled that computer out of a manila envelope, the tech world was stunned. It was stunned again when, in 2010, Apple redesigned the Air in two sizes: 11- and 13.3-inches, starting at $999 for the smaller model and $1,299 for the larger one (and it got rid of the spinning hard drive).

The MacBook Air would push leading PC companies to chase Apple in laptops for well more than a decade, as Dell updated the XPS line, HP jumped to the premium Spectre, and even Lenovo's ThinkPads saw the X1 series.

The MacBook Air would stay in the spotlight, 12 years later. Following some hum-dum upgrades in Apple's last Intel years, including the lackluster Touch Bar (in fact, in 2018, with little attention, I wrote for Laptop Mag that Apple needed to either upgrade or kill the laptop), it would be one of the first machines, along with the MacBook Pro and Mac Mini, to ditch Intel and move to Apple's first in-house silicon, the M1 system-on-a-chip. It was widely seen as a success.

Today, Macs don't have the kind of modularity or upgradeability they had when Wozniak showed off the Apple-1 at the Homebrew Computer Club. But with the release of the $599 MacBook Neo, time has caught up with Apple at 50 years old. There's another computer that feels like an all-in-one package for more people. But there are more challenges to come, as Apple faces a new world focused on AI, with new players and competitors. While the company still seems to be trying to deliver on promises around Apple Intelligence, the company has partnered with Google to use Gemini models to make an AI-focused Siri.

The 50-year anniversary has inspired celebrations, with museum collections, like the Mimms Museum of Technology and Art in Georgia showing off over 2,000 artifacts related to the company's history, and the vaunted Computer History Museum in Mountain View offering special programming. Apple has had an array of concerts and other performances at stores globally. But for most, it's just Wednesday, even if you have an iPhone in your pocket.

Geopolitical concerns, political pressure from the U.S. government, potential tariffs imposed on semiconductors produced outside of the U.S., and capacity constraints are pushing Apple and Nvidia to consider outsourcing production and packaging of some of their processors to Intel in the U.S., reports DigiTimes. The two companies are reportedly considering outsourcing some of their non-core products to Intel in 2028. Neither of the companies have confirmed the plans.

Apple and Nvidia are reportedly considering using Intel's 18A (or rather 18A-P) or Intel 14A process technology, though it remains to be seen whether Intel has enough advanced capacity for third-party customers in 2028. In addition to the sheer scale of production that Intel must offer to land orders with Apple and Nvidia, it will also have to offer an easy way to port chip designs from TSMC process nodes to its own fabrication technologies, as well as deliver the desired performance and power consumption targets. Yet, keeping in mind that both companies are reportedly looking at Intel primarily due to political pressure, geopolitical concerns, and tariff risks, they might relax some of their demands if key goals are met.

Making Apple's M-series chips at Intel

Apple is reportedly holding discussions with Intel about producing some of its entry-level M-series processors for Mac computers, currently made by TSMC, using Intel instead. While the alleged plan marks a cautious re-engagement with Intel after Apple's transition away from Intel x86 CPUs to its in-house designed custom silicon starting in 2020 and completed in 2022, the renewed talks are driven less by technology considerations and more by geopolitical reasons, cost and tariff concerns, and risk diversification.

Apple's vanilla M-series processors power cost-sensitive laptops and tablets. These CPUs feature relatively small die sizes, relatively cheap packaging, as well as relatively high tolerance for yield and performance variability while being sensitive to costs. Therefore, producing these system-on-chips (SoCs) that are aimed solely at the U.S. market makes sense in the U.S.. Although actual systems are assembled in Asia for now, U.S. policy seems to be semiconductor-centric, not device-centric. Meanwhile, to meet U.S. policy requirements, Apple will have to conduct both silicon production and packaging operations in the U.S.

While Apple's vanilla M-series CPUs are important products for the company, they are not as crucially important as A-series SoCs for iPhones and are not as performance-demanding as M Pro and M Max offerings. Yet, to produce M-series chips at Intel, it is vital that Apple can port its latest micro-architectures to Intel's nodes without major performance degradation to remain competitive on the American market, as this is the key market for the company's popular products like the MacBook Air or iPad Pro.

Packaging Feynman GPUs in America?

Nvidia is reportedly pursuing a similar tactic, but in the case of the AI GPU developer, things are much more complicated. The company reportedly plans to make some of I/O dies for its Feynman GPUs at Intel in the U.S. Furthermore, Nvidia intends to package some (25%) of its Feynman GPUs using EMIB technology at Intel's New Mexico facilities in America, according to DigiTimes. There might be a problem with such an approach, though.

Nvidia's Feynman will likely consume 5 kW – 6 kW of power, points at which traditional board-level voltage regulation will no longer scale, so these processors will require voltage regulator integration (IVR) into advanced packaging (i.e., CoWoS-L interposer). At these currents (we are talking thousands of Amperes here), delivering sub-1V directly from the motherboard leads to severe IR drop, PDN losses, and slow transient response that cannot support aggressive DVFS across large multi-die designs. As a result, building an IVR into packaging enables power to enter the package at a higher voltage (around 1.8 V), which cuts current per bump, improves efficiency, and cuts voltage ripple, while also enabling 10X – 100X faster response than on-board VRMs. To that end, packaging with integrated IVR becomes the primary enabler of performance scaling.

While EMIB can support co-packaged IVR components, as this will not be a true embedded IVR, it will not be enough for a 5 kW – 6 kW AI accelerator. Of course, Intel has Foveros technologies (including Foveros Omni, Foveros Direct 3D, etc.), but these are not direct alternatives to CoWoS-L. While Intel's Foveros technology can certainly support multi-kilowatt power delivery with low IR drop, it does so by vertically stacking dedicated power tiles with logic, which provides extremely fast regulation and fine-grained control. However, this approach prioritizes low inductance and transient response over embedded passive volume, and therefore represents a fundamentally different IVR philosophy rather than a direct analogue to CoWoS-L. To that end, if Nvidia would like to use Foveros Direct3D packaging for Feynman, it would have to redesign the GPU compared to one produced by TSMC for CoWoS-L.

Given complexities with using EMIB and Foveros for high-end data center Feynman GPUs, it is more likely that Nvidia will wait before TSMC brings its advanced packaging to America towards the end of the decade, as it is hardly viable to redesign these large GPUs for Foveros. Still, Intel could probably land packaging orders for Vera CPUs or introduce its custom Xeon CPUs for Nvidia sooner rather than later to land some business from the company it got $5 billion of investment from recently.

Apple is preparing to qualify Intel’s 18A process for its lowest-end M-series processor, according to a post on X from analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. He reports that Apple has already signed an NDA with Intel and received the 18AP PDK 0.9.1GA, with internal simulation work tracking close enough to expectations for the company to wait on the full 1.0 and 1.1 releases currently planned for the first quarter of 2026.

On that trajectory, Intel could begin shipping production silicon in the second or third quarter of 2027. This would mark the first time Intel had fabbed any Apple silicon since Apple dumped the company entirely in late 2023.

The chip in question is the base M-class SoC used in the MacBook Air and iPad Pro, which together accounted for around 20 million units in 2025. Kuo expects annual shipments of this tier to settle between 15 million and 20 million units in 2026 and 2027 as Apple introduces a lower-cost MacBook line built around an iPhone-class processor. These volumes are significant for any new foundry customer, yet small enough that they would not shift TSMC’s near-term revenue mix or its lead in advanced manufacturing.

Kuo’s post also describes a marked improvement in visibility around Intel becoming a viable advanced-node supplier to Apple. Until recently, 18A’s future as a general-purpose foundry platform looked uncertain. Intel has spent the past two years tightening roadmaps and warning investors that early 18A margins would be weak while yields climbed to production targets. The arrival of an Apple design team working directly with pre-release PDKs indicates that the node has reached a stage where external customers can begin serious evaluation.

Apple’s own motivations are twofold. The company remains anchored to TSMC for its most advanced products, from iPhones to the higher-end M-series parts, but has been pursuing greater supply chain redundancy since the 2020-2022 disruption cycles. Placing its least complex Mac-class SoC on a second source reduces single-foundry exposure without touching the flagship lines that rely on TSMC’s flagship silicon.

Kuo also notes that the move would align with Washington’s push for more domestic semiconductor manufacturing. Intel’s Arizona fabs are central to that policy and would be natural candidates to host 18A for an Apple order.

The risk, as always, lies in timelines. Apple’s internal work may be on track, yet nothing proceeds to tape-out until the full PDK is in hand and Intel demonstrates repeatable performance and yield metrics. Between now and the first half of 2026, Intel must deliver the complete tool chain and process corner validation that Apple’s silicon teams require. If it does, 2027 becomes the first realistic opportunity for a mainstream Apple product to ship on Intel’s most advanced process. If it slips, the plan shifts with it.

For now, if accurate, Apple’s decision to move beyond preliminary talks and into structured 18A evaluation gives Intel something it has lacked for several years: a prospective anchor customer willing to test the maturity of its leading-edge manufacturing at scale.

Apple unveiled the latest addition to its family of homegrown chips — the M5 — a couple of days ago, and it's powering both the new iPad Pro and the 14-inch MacBook Pro. New Geekbench listings spotted by Tech Info reveal that the performance in single-core scores is enough to rival Intel's Ultra 9 285K and breeze past AMD's 9950X3D. As is to be expected, it struggles in multi-core against those models, but the results show the potential of Apple's latest silicon and the surely-inevitable Pro and Max variants of this new chip.

The M5 iPad Pro scores 4,138 points in the single-core test, outperformed by the M5 MacBook Pro, which scores 4,263 points. That's not too bad, but the real jump is observed in multi-core results, where the M5 MacBook Pro scores 17,862 points versus the iPad's 16,366 — constituting a 9% difference in performance. That's with the same 10-core base configuration on either device, but the MacBook does have active cooling and a much thicker chassis that can prevent thermal throttling and allow the chip to boost higher, sustaining that for longer periods of time.

It's easy to see why a fully-fledged "pro" laptop would outperform a thin (albeit overkill) tablet, even though they carry the same quality silicon under the hood. Apple never actually discloses clock speed numbers in its tech specs, but in the Geekbench listings, we see that the iPad Pro's M5 ran at 4.43 GHz, while the MacBook Pro's M5 topped out at 4.61 GHz. So, this doesn't necessarily equate to chip binning, but more so the enhanced cooling factor.

More importantly, though, these numbers are enough to beat the recently-launched Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, which scored around 4,080 points in the single-core Geekbench test, meaning the M5 in even the iPad is faster — and that's using official Qualcomm numbers. Moreover, compared to the M4, the new M5 is almost 10% ahead in single-core performance, and around 15% faster in multi-core performance versus the newest M4 MacBook Pro listing on Geekbench.

Compared to PC chips, the M5 is only behind a few single-core listings on Geekbench, if we count the best results, which makes sense considering how there's literally only one M5 MacBook Pro score right now, so it's quite cherry-picked. This also serves as your disclaimer for taking all these numbers with a grain of salt, since the sample size is simply too low at the moment to jump to any conclusions.

Intel's Core i9-14900KS scores 4,457 points in the single-core test, making it 4.6% faster. The current-gen Core Ultra 9 285K isn't far off at 4,306 points, rendering the M5 only about 1% slower. AMD's fastest chip on Geekbench is actually the midrange Ryzen 5 7600 with 4,226 points, but that test is deemed invalid; therefore, both the 9950X and the 9800X3D take the top spot, with 3,616 (and 3,615) points — which the M5 comfortably bests.

In multi-threaded performance, though, the M5 gets absolutely shredded across the board, and that's because it simply doesn't have enough cores to stack up to the AMD and Intel flagships. However, this could change with the higher spec'd 14-core M5 that hasn't been tested yet, and we'd assume the M5 Pro and M5 Max will certainly help level the playing field in this regard. The table above uses numbers from Geekbench's processor benchmark database to paint a more accurate picture, alongside the extreme differences we mentioned earlier.

After teasing a new product launch on X earlier today, Apple has just announced the 2025 refresh to its 14-inch MacBook Pro lineup, now equipped with the shiny new M5 chip. The press release, accompanied by a separate M5 announcement, was just published on the company's website, unpacking the new laptop in great detail. It's largely an iterative update, with the new chip nicely slotting in for yesteryear's M4 in an otherwise largely unchanged package.

There are no design tweaks or exciting features to speak of. The chassis, including the 14-inch Mini LED display, is identical to previous models — just like all the other core features such as ports, speakers, keyboard, trackpad, and even the 12 MP webcam. The battery is once again quoted to last 24 hours in video playback, and you still only get Wi-Fi 6E. However, the SSD is 2x faster compared to last gen, and you can now spec it up to 4 TB, twice as much as previous gen.

It's clear that Apple is entirely focused on what's inside, the latest generation of its homegrown M-series silicon — M5. This swap is what likely enables the memory bandwidth to be upgraded from 120 GB/s on the M4 to now "over 150 GB/s" on the M5.

The SoC package includes a 10-core CPU, a 10-core GPU with "a Neural Accelerator in each core," and a 16-core NPU for on-device AI. The M5 chip is built on TSMC's N3P node and has a faster GPU that can deliver 1.6x more FPS in games, 20% faster multi-core CPU performance, and 1.7x quicker render times in Blender — all versus the M4. Apple even says it's 86x more powerful than Intel-based Macs in AI applications.

The price for the new 14-inch MacBook Pro remains the same as last year, with the base model starting at $1,599, offering you a 512 GB SSD and 16 GB of RAM. Keep in mind that, just like M4, the base M5 isn't available on the 16-inch models as they start out with a Pro chip (so, presumably M5 Pro). The device is available to pre-order right away, with general availability beginning next week on October 22. Alongside the MacBook Pro, Apple also refreshed the Vision Pro and the iPad Pro with the new M5 chip.

The tablet gets Apple's in-house C1X modem and N1 networking chip that brings Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support, offering faster connectivity across the board with 30% less power usage compared to the M4 iPad Pro. On the other hand, the mixed reality headset now has a new Dual Knit headband, also available for purchase separately for $99. Therefore, M5's improvements in performance, battery life, and AI-powered workflows are present on the Vision Pro and iPad Pro as well.

Accompanying that is the fresh software for each of these devices, including the MacBook Pro, with the latest OS versions adding newer features and, of course, the Liquid Glass visual overhaul. Prices remain the same as last gen for both the iPad and Vision Pro as well.

Cupertino just launched its 5th-generation Apple silicon, the M5 chip, with the company saying that it has embedded a neural accelerator in each GPU core, allowing it to run AI workloads much faster. Aside from that, Apple says that the base M5 chip now has a 10-core CPU and a 10-core GPU, giving the newer processor two extra cores in both the graphics and general compute departments compared to the previous generation's entry-level SoC.

“M5 ushers in the next big leap in AI performance for Apple silicon. With the introduction of Neural Accelerators in the GPU, M5 delivers a huge boost to AI workloads,” Apple Senior Vice President of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji said. “Combined with a big increase in graphics performance, the world’s fastest CPU core, a faster Neural Engine, and even higher unified memory bandwidth, M5 brings far more performance and capabilities to MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro.”

Although it still uses 3nm technology from TSMC, the N3P process node used on the M5 (versus N3E on the M4) delivers improved capability through slightly higher transistor density. The company says that it has four times the peak GPU performance when it comes to AI processing over the M4, and that it offers up to 45% better graphics quality, plus third-generation ray tracing capability. There’s also a 30% bump in memory bandwidth, with the speed going from 120GB/sec to 153GB/sec in the M5, and, of course, a 15% improvement in multithreaded performance.

Apple’s press release mostly focuses on the chip’s better performance in artificial intelligence workloads, but we’re also hopeful that these numbers will translate to a better gaming experience on the Mac. Unfortunately, we don’t know how the chip will perform compared to its competitors from AMD and Nvidia in the 14-inch MacBook Pro, as we haven’t seen benchmarks yet. However, a leaked Geekbench result of an M5-powered iPad Pro showed the base M5 matching the M4 Max and beating every other competitor in the single-core test.

Those who want to be on the latest, cutting-edge Apple hardware can now pre-order the Apple M5 chip inside the MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro. The company expects these devices to ship on the 22nd, with in-store availability arriving on the same day.

Those who are already on Apple M3 or newer should wait for third-party benchmarks to appear, just so they know if the M5 is worth upgrading to or if they should wait a couple more years. We also don’t have the Pro and Max versions of the M5 (or the M4 Ultra) just yet, but the company typically waits a few months before releasing them to the public.

Mac gamer and YouTube creator Andrew Tsai tested Cyberpunk 2077 on four different Macs, where he found the game was able to perform relatively well on all models that are within spec. He shared the results of the test in a YouTube video, where he compared four MacBooks — an M4 MacBook Pro (16GB / 10-core GPU), an M3 Max MacBook Pro (48GB / 40-core GPU), an M1 Max MacBook Pro (32GB / 32-core GPU), and, lastly, an M1 MacBook Air (8GB / 8-core GPU). Andrew also tried running the game on the M4 MacBook Pro via Crossover.

Mac gamers have been patiently waiting for this AAA title to land on macOS, with many expecting its arrival in early 2025. Although a bit late, the game did eventually land last July 17, with users who’ve previously bought it on Steam able to install it directly on their Apple computers at no additional cost. CD Projekt Red set the game’s recommended specs at M3 Pro and 18GB of unified memory for smooth 1080p 60 FPS gameplay, although you can get away with a base M1 chip paired with 16GB of unified memory.

With this in mind, Andrew tested four MacBooks to see how they’d compare:

According to Tsai's results, the best-performing MacBook was powered by the M3 Max chip, with its 40-core GPU and 48GB of unified memory, with the game achieving more than 78 FPS at 1080p High and upscaling turned off. When he set MetalFX to quality, performance jumped to more than 100 FPS, delivering an absolutely smooth gameplay experience. The next best system tested was the M1 Max MacBook Pro. Despite being a first-generation model, its Max designation allowed it to perform better than the base M4 chip on the MacBook Pro, delivering a consistent 51.87 FPS whether MetalFX is turned on or off.

Those who didn’t get a top-of-the-line MacBook can still enjoy the game with upscaling, as the M4 chip can still deliver more than 30 FPS with upscaling turned on. If you’re not a fan of that tech, you can still get cinematic gameplay with MetalFX: Off, as you still get an average of 26.22 FPS. The worst performer is the first-generation M1 MacBook Air, which the game does not officially support because it only has 8GB of unified memory. As expected, the benchmark only achieved a little over 12 FPS — and that’s with MetalFX set to quality. Andrew didn’t bother testing the M1 MacBook Air with MetalFX: Off, as it might’ve crashed the laptop.

Another interesting test the YouTuber did was to run the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark on the M4 MacBook Pro through the CrossOver compatibility layer. Interestingly, it only lost about three FPS compared to the game running natively. Still, Andrew expects these FPS numbers to improve over the coming months as the developers optimize the game more for the Apple Silicon.

Apple is reportedly working on a new, cheaper MacBook using a chip originally designed for the iPhone. Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo posted on X that the company is planning a new 13-inch laptop using an A18 Pro chip.

The laptop, which Kuo says would launch at the end of 2025 or the beginning of 2026, would be Apple's first Mac running on an A-series chip. The A18 Pro, which powers the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max, averages in the 3,400s on the Geekbench 6 single-core benchmark and 8,500 to 8,600 in multi-core.

Those single-core scores are only slightly lower than what you see in the M4, which range between 3,400 and 3,700 points on the same test, depending on which Mac they're in. The multi-core score is a lot closer to the original M1 generation, which also falls around 8,500.

This device will also reportedly come in various colors, including silver, blue, pink, and yellow. Some fans have called for Apple to bring the colors from the iMac line to the MacBook, but it hasn't done so yet. Apple's latest experiment with color on Mac laptops has been with the tastefully muted sky blue on the M4 MacBook Air.

Kuo states that Apple is looking to sell 5–7 million units of this product in 2026. It's unclear how much they might cost, but presumably, these would be entry-level laptops that undercut the $999 MacBook Air. They would have to be pretty cheap to compete. The M3 MacBook Air has dropped to $799 new on sale before. Apple's current affordable play is at Walmart, which sells the M1 MacBook Air with the old design, 256GB of storage, and 8GB of RAM for $649.

A lower price might put Apple in a position to compete with cheaper Chromebooks and mid-level Windows laptops in a play for the education market and for those who might only use their laptops for email, web browsing, and other simple tasks.

The reference design is reportedly being supplied by Everwin Precision in Shenzhen, China. Beyond the laptop, Kuo claims that Everwin is building frames for smart glasses due to ship in 2027. Those would feature audio playback, a camera, and video recording like Meta's AI glasses, as well as "AI environmental sensing." Kuo says the glasses will lack display functionality. We'll have to see if any or all of these predictions come to pass.

External GPU (eGPU) support on Apple Silicon Macs and MacBooks has been a persistent pain point for AI/ML developers. Through what some may consider to be black magic, Tiny Corp has managed to get an AMD eGPU working in Tiny Grad over USB3, a standard that inherently lacks PCIe capabilities. As they're using libusb, this functionality extends to Windows, Linux, and even macOS, including devices with Apple Silicon.

Traditionally, GPUs are connected through PCIe slots or the Thunderbolt/USB4 interfaces, which offer PCI Express tunneling support. As such, external GPU solutions rely on the aforementioned interfaces, which limits their support for older systems and laptops. Unlike Intel-based Macs/MacBooks, Apple Silicon based devices do not support external GPUs, mainly due to the lack of driver support and architectural differences. So, despite their efficiency compared to traditional x86-based systems, users have reported challenges in AI workloads, especially when it comes to prompt processing.

Requirements for running an eGPU through a USB3 interface at this time include the use of an ASM2464PD-based adapter and an AMD GPU. For its tests, Tiny Corp used the ADT-UT3G adapter, which uses the same ASM2464PD chip, but out of the box, it only works with Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, or USB 4 interfaces. The team likely employed a custom firmware to enable USB3 mode that works without direct PCIe communication. Technical details are murky, however, the controller appears to be translating PCIe commands to USB packets and vice versa.

Earlier this week, a team of security researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Ruhr University Bochum presented a pair of papers on two side-channel speculative execution attacks targeted at Apple silicon, dubbed SLAP and FLOP [h/t Bleeping Computer]. A dedicated web page for the attacks, showing some examples, documentation, and links to the original two papers, is also available at the aptly-named URL Predictors.Fail.

So, what are these attacks? To understand either, you first need a working understanding of what speculative execution attacks are. In March of last year, I covered a speculative execution attack called GhostRace, and back in 2016, the one-two punch of the Meltdown and Spectre attacks helped introduce the concept into the wider public consciousness. "Speculative execution" isn't a bad thing in and of itself— you can think of it as a performance optimization that lets a CPU "speculate" what it needs to execute next— but unless it's tightly controlled, it is prone to security exploits that are near-impossible to fix without performance degradation.

So, SLAP and FLOP may be new speculative execution attacks, but the fundamentals of how they work are well known.

SLAP, or Data Speculation Attacks via Load Address Prediction, functions by exploiting Apple Silicon's Load Address Predictor, which guesses the next memory address the CPU will use. By exploiting this functionality and forcing it to guess wrong, information like emails and browsing history can effectively be stolen. This impacts Apple CPUs, starting with Apple M2 and A15.

Meanwhile, FLOP, or False Load Output Predictions, exploits Apple Silicon's Load Value Predictor, which guesses data values to be returned by the memory on the next CPU cycle. If this is exploited and forced to guess wrong, memory safety can be bypassed entirely to leak things like credit card information and location history.

In a statement made to Bleeping Computer, Apple said: "We want to thank the researchers for their collaboration as this proof of concept advances our understanding of these types of threats, (but) based on our analysis, we do not believe this issue poses an immediate risk to our users."

The researchers do note that attacks actually using these exploits have yet to be spotted in the wild after initially discovering and reporting them to Apple in March (SLAP) and September (FLOP) in 2024, but also that users hoping to avoid them entirely can still disable JavaScript in Safari (tested browser) on their Apple devices until further notice. Doing this will introduce lots of site compatibility issues, though, so hopefully Apple actually patches this sooner rather than later.

The Apple M1 iMac, originally released in May 2021, may have a design flaw that is only now becoming apparent. A flood of users have noted that their Apple Silicon desktop All-in-Ones are suffering from a series of display failures causing dark horizontal lines to persist on their screens. A thread on the Apple Community site discussing this specific issue in detail began in October 2023 and has since garnered 17 pages of responses from disgruntled users. However, Apple has yet to recognize it as a manufacturing defect or flaw, with no official announcements from the company regarding a fix for this issue.

Many affected users assert that Apple’s service centers describe this screen issue as an irreparable malfunction, and that the only viable solution is to replace it. However, since the problem only typically appears after two years, most devices are already out of warranty, meaning those affected have to pay around $600 to $700 for a screen replacement. At that price, you could buy a brand-new base-model M2 Mac Mini, for example

According to an investigation by one of the affected users, the Apple iMac screen uses a flex cable that must sustain a voltage of around 50 volts when the screen is set to high or maximum brightness. This causes the connector to burn out over time,  it was theorized, resulting in short circuits that cause the black lines to appear on the screen. Thus, you could spend the money on a screen replacement, only for the issue to return in a year or two.

The user theorized that there are three possible reasons why this is happening: a design flaw, a manufacturing defect, or a supplier delivering parts that didn’t meet Apple’s standards. 

We were interested to see another user reporting that their M3 iMac, which they bought in May 2024, was suffering from a similar problem. If Apple did not change the flex cable design from the previous generation iMac, then it is conceivable the defect could occur again in newer generation iMacs. However, we must remember that even tens or a few hundred users complaining about this issue account for a very small percentage of iMacs sold.

Unless you have an active AppleCare+ plan, repairing this issue would be prohibitively expensive, unless Apple decides to do a recall. At the moment, if you don’t want to spend money on the screen repair and are hoping that Apple will someday repair it for free, your only choice is to attach an external monitor and use the system that way.

One user did get a free repair authorized by a senior Apple representative, but this seems to be an exception rather than the norm. And if Apple still uses the same flex cable design that is purportedly causing the issue, with the same thirst for power, then the same screen issues may proliferate across generations.

Apple's latest A18 (non-Pro) application processor for smartphones not only challenges AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X and Apple's M4 in single-thread workloads in Geekbench 6, but it seemingly beats all previous-generation flagship CPUs for desktops and laptops. But when it comes to multi-thread, the limited amount of cores certainly makes an impact on performance. 

Apple's vanilla A18 processor packs two high-performance cores operating at up to 4.0 GHz (the first time the company's smartphone processor hits such a high frequency) and four low-power cores. The new A18 system-on-chip (SoC) scores 3409 points in a Geekbench 6 single-thread benchmark and 8492 points in Geekbench 6 multi-thread benchmarks, both are very good results. In fact, they are 15.5% higher for single-thread performance and 16.6% higher for multi-thread performance when compared to its direct predecessor, the A16 Pro. The new chip is also tangibly faster than Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, at least on this one test.

When compared to PC-grade processors, A18 looks pretty good too. It beats Apple's M3, AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X, and Intel's Core i9-14900KS processors in the single-thread Geekbench 6 benchmark. It also challenges AMD's Ryzen 9 9950X, but falls behind Apple's own M4 (which has 400 MHz higher clocks) both CPUs have considerably higher power budgets. As you might expect, then it comes to multi-thread performance, A18 with its six cores falls significantly behind PC-grade processors. Hence, the intrigue is whether the eight-core A18 Pro can challenge Apple's M3.

Keeping in mind that the A18's frequency increase, when compared to its predecessor is 6%, the majority of single-thread and multi-thread performance improvements should be attributed to microarchitectural enhancements.  

While the performance increases look modest, this isn't particularly surprising as Apple's A18 is made on TSMC's N3E (3nm-class) process technology that was architected to reduce costs compared to N3B (3nm-class), at the cost of transistor density rather than to tangibly increase performance or lower power consumption (even though N3E enables a bit higher clocks and reduces power compared to N3B). In other words, Apple had a limited transistor budget to add here. 

One thing to keep in mind about Geekbench 6 results is that we are dealing with a synthetic benchmark, and the real-world performance of Apple's A18 and A18 Pro will be different. Nonetheless, Geekbench 6 results seemingly demonstrate that Apple's own performance estimates are accurate (who said they are not based on Geekbench 6 though?) and that the company's new processors can offer about 15% performance improvements over the A17 Pro in best-case scenarios. 

Apple has announced its new M4, the latest in the line of high-end Apple Silicon chips. Surprisingly, the new chip didn’t debut in a Mac but instead in the company’s new 11- and 13-inch iPad Pros. The company explained that the existing M3 couldn’t handle the technological advances incorporated into the new iPad Pros, and only the M4 would suffice. So, what exactly does the M4 bring to the table?

The M4 is built using a second-generation 3-nanometer process node (TSMC N3E), which is a refinement of the node used for the M3 (N3B). It is the successor to the M3 family, which first debuted in October 2023 in the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max.

Apple M4 At a Glance (iPad Pro configuration)

• CPU with up to 4 performance cores, 6 efficiency cores, 28 billion transistors
• 10-core GPU
• 16-core Neural Engine (38 TOPS)
• Second-generation 3-nanometer process node (TSMC N3E)
• Launches mid-May 2024
• Up to 16GB of unified memory
• 120 GB/s unified memory bandwidth

Apple M4 Benchmarks, Specifications and Features

The M4 is the first of Apple's fourth-generation “M Series” processors. We don’t currently have official clock speeds or actual performance numbers for the M4, but we have seen early benchmarks posted to public databases that imply the chip is the fastest in the world in single-core performance. Tom's Hardware can’t validate those results, however.

Instead, Apple has provided only vague comparisons to previous-generation processors. For example, Apple says that the M4, as used in the iPad Pro, is up to 1.5x more powerful than the M2 used in the previous generation model. However, we can’t really compare these numbers to the versions of the M4 that will appear in future MacBook Air or iMac models, as those devices are less thermally constrained. In addition, it’s claimed that the M4 can deliver the same performance as the M2 while using only half the amount of power. Compared to the M2, M4 is also said to improve thermal performance by up to 20 percent.

The 10-core GPU in the M4 brings support for Dynamic Caching and hardware-accelerated ray tracing. These features were first introduced in previous Apple Silicon chips like the A17 Pro and the M3. Apple claims that rendering performance in Octane is up to four times faster compared to M2. Apple also makes the spurious claim that the M4 can deliver the same performance as an Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (UX3405MA) with Core Ultra 7 155H and 32GB of RAM while using just a quarter of the power.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to sit front and center during Apple’s WWDC 2024 keynote in June. The next versions of iOS, iPadOS and macOS are expected to greatly leverage AI for background work and user-facing features. As a result, Apple continues its year-over-year improvements in Neural Processing Unit (NPU) performance with the M4. The 16-core neural engine in the M3 is capable of 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS). For reference, Qualcomm claims that the NPU in the competing Snapdragon X Elite is capable of up to 45 TOPS.

Another important puzzle piece in the M4 is its Media Engine, which supports all of today’s popular video codes including H.264, HEVC and Apple’s own ProRes. In addition, the M4 enabled the iPad Pro family to support hardware acceleration for AV1 for the first time.

Apple M4 Chip Positioning

According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the first three M4 variants are codenamed Donan (entry-level), Brava (high-performance), and Hidra (flagship performance), which should correspond with M4, M4 Pro/Max, and M4 Ultra, respectively. We’ve already seen the M4 in the latest iPad Pro, but the chip (in various bins) will likely end up in MacBook Air, entry-level MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini systems. The eventual M4 Pro should find its way into MacBook Pro and Mac Mini systems. M4 Max will be the domain of MacBook Pro and Mac Studio, while M4 Ultra will find a home in Mac Studio and Mac Pro systems. It should be noted that Apple has yet to release Mac Studio or Mac Pro systems with M3 Ultra.

Chip Configurations and AI

As is the case with the M3 family, there will likely be binned versions of each chip, with multiple CPU and GPU core configurations available paired with varying amounts of RAM. For instance, the M3 Pro offers 11-core CPU/14-core GPU and 12-core CPU/18-core GPU configurations. Likewise, the M3 Max is available in 14-core CPU/30-core GPU and 16-core CPU/40-core GPU configurations. Expect similar binning options for the M4, which uses a second-generation 3nm process node.

Right now, we only know of two configurations for the M4-series processor (iPad Pro). 256GB and 512GB versions of the iPad Pro feature a 9-core CPU (3 performance cores, 6 efficiency cores) paired with 8GB of unified memory. The second configuration – found in 1TB and 2TB SKUs – features a 10-core CPU (4 performance cores, 6 efficiency cores) coupled with 16GB of unified memory. Both M4 chips feature 28 billion transistors, 10 GPU cores, a 16-core neural engine, and 120 GB/s memory bandwidth.

Apple's MacBook Pros currently offer top-range M3 Max configurations with up to 128GB of unified memory. Apple Silicion desktop Macs have yet to transition to the M3 family, so M2 Ultra configurations are currently limited to a maximum of 192GB of unified memory. Gurman suggests that the limit for desktop Macs (Mac Studio and Mac Pro) could expand greatly to 512GB with the M4 line. That figure still pales compared to previous-generation Intel-based Mac Pros, which could accommodate up to 1.5TB of memory.

The M3 features a 16-core Neural engine capable of 18 TOPS. The M4 more than doubles that to 38 TOPS. Apple is said to make AI operations a big focus of its next-generation operating systems, which are due to launch for consumers in Fall 2024. Most of these AI operations will be run on-device rather than in the cloud, which is in keeping with Apple's privacy-focused mantra.

Apple M4 Release Dates and Pricing

Release Dates

Based on what we know at this point, this is the firing order for all the upcoming iPad Pros and Macs destined to receive a variant of the M4 processor:

Apple M4 Pricing

At this time, the only available Apple product with an M4 processor onboard is the 2024 iPad Pro family. The iPad Pro is available in two screen sizes: 11-inches and 13-inches. While both feature Apple’s new 120Hz Ultra Retina XDR Display with “Tandem OLED” technology, the former has a resolution of 2420 x 1668, while the latter comes in at 2752 x 2064.

Both models are available in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 16TB storage configurations, starting at $999 for the 11-inch model and $1,299 for the larger 13-inch tablet.

MORE: Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus All We Know

MORE: Zen 4 Ryzen 7000 All We Know

MORE: Raptor Lake All We Know

Apple yesterday announced the latest iteration of its own silicon with the M4-powered iPad Pros. The company claims that the CPU is 50% percent faster than the M2 on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (6th-generation), sporting two more cores (4 performance + 6 efficiency) over the last generation’s eight cores (4 performance + 4 efficiency). Although we cannot yet confirm these claims, the M4’s Neural Engine was tested today on Geekbench, with machine learning (ML) benchmarks posted under iPad 16,3. As ever with leaks and unverified benchmarks, take the news with a pinch of salt.

The results do not explicitly say iPad Pro (13-inch), but the specifications noted on the benchmark match that of the higher-end M4-powered iPad: a 10-core ARM processor with 16GB RAM. We also compared it with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro (6th generation)’s machine learning test results to see how it would stack up against, and the results show an incremental improvement over the last gen’s ML performance.

The M4 iPad Pro hit a Geekbench ML 0.6.0 score of 9234, around 22.9% better than the M2-powered iPad Pro’s 7511. We also compared the M4 iPad Pro’s ML performance with an M3 14-inch MacBook Pro, where its gains were a little more modest at 10.4% (8365 vs. 9234). However, the M3 MacBook Pro might have a slight advantage over the M4 iPad Pro owing to its larger chassis and battery.

The original M1 Apple silicon was a true generational leap over Intel’s x86 processors. However, the subsequent M2, M3, and M4 chips are just building on the M1’s architecture instead of offering massive gains. Nevertheless, the M4 focuses heavily on AI processing, with its 16-core neural engine supporting up to 38 trillion operations per second (TOPS). In comparison, the previous-gen M3 also has a 16-core neural engine. Apple's M3 was rated for 18 TOPS at FP16 precision, but the M4 is rated for 38 TOPS with INT8. That means, if equalized to INT8 precision, we're looking at a 5% improvement in TOPS for the M4 over the M3.  

However, the May 7 presentation mainly focused on hardware — the new iPad Air, iPad Pro, and the Apple Pencil Pro. We’ve only received a few snapshots of what AI features the M4 silicon will bring us, mostly on its use with Final Cut Pro for iPad 2 and Logic Pro for iPad 2. Aside from that, there wasn’t much mention of AI; we expect that to happen during WWDC 2024 instead.

Apple still has the upper hand in mobile computing, especially as Windows laptops still lag behind in terms of efficiency. But Qualcomm isn’t far behind, with the Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips beating AMD and Intel’s top laptop processors. Assuming Windows 11 (or Windows 12) can take proper advantage of these new Arm processors, we’re entering a new golden age of powerful yet highly efficient laptops, and Apple has to step up its game to remain in the lead.

Apple announced its latest processor, the M4, in a video event today. The new chip, which is meant to focus on AI performance, will debut in the new iPad Pro tablets — the first time Apple has introduced an M-series chip in an iPad rather than a Mac.

The M4 is built on a 2nd-generation 3-nanometer process. It features four performance cores, six efficiency cores, and a 10-core GPU that brings ray tracing and hardware-accelerated mesh shading to the iPad for the first time. Apple called out the greater chip industry for just starting to put NPUs in its chips, while Apple has been doing it for years. The M4's new 16-core neural engine supports 38 trillion operations per second.  In total, Apple's latest chip has over 28 billion transistors on board.

The reason for the sudden jump to M4 is Apple's new iPad Pros, which include new AI features (Apple did use the term "AI" rather than "machine learning") and a new screen that uses a novel display engine on M4.

Apple claims that "compared with the latest PC chip in a thin and light laptop, M4 can deliver the same performance using just a fourth of the power." In its testing notes, Apple says it used an Asus Zenbook 14 OLED (UX3405MA) with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and 32GB of RAM for the comparison.

The M4 brings AV1 hardware acceleration to the iPad for the first time, alongside  H.264, HEVC, and ProRes. Alongside the new chip and tablets, Apple showed off new AI features for Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro.

iPad Pro (11-inch and 13-inch)

The first devices to use Apple’s new powerful M4 chip are the new 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Pro. Apple’s ambitions regarding performance for the new generations of iPad Pros meant that the existing M3 processor just wouldn’t do – which is where the M4 comes into play.

According to Apple, when used in the iPad Pro, the M4 is 50% faster than the M2 used in the previous generation models. Alternatively, the M4 can deliver the same performance as the M2 while using half the power. Apple was also able to deliver 20% improved thermal performance thanks to the use of copper in Apple logo and graphite sheets in iPad housing.

The other big news is with the displays, which are now OLED-based. Apple uses Tandem OLED panels in each iPad Pro, combining the light from both. The new display is called Ultra Retina XDR, and delivers 1,000 nits full screen brightness and 1,600 nits peak HDR brightness. Apple has also added an option for a nano-texture finish for the display.

The 13-inch iPad Pro is Apple’s thinnest device to-date at just 5.1mm, while the 11-inch model is slightly thicker at 5.3mm. Like the new iPad Airs, the 12MP FaceTime HD camera on the new iPad Pros has been moved to the side of the device, which makes it easier for video conferencing (and while using the Magic Keyboard).

The new 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $999, while the larger 13-inch model starts at $1,299. Both now come standard with 256GB of storage, which is double the amount of their predecessors. Preorders start today, with shipments commencing next week.

iPad Air (11-inch and 13-inch)

Apple also announced an all-new iPad Air, which now is available in two screen sizes: 11 inches and 13 inches. While the exterior design is not a huge leap forward, there are some minor revisions to make the user experience better. For example, the 12MP FaceTime HD camera has been repositioned from the top of the device to the side — this puts the camera in the optimum position when using the iPad Air in a landscape orientation. The stereo speakers have also been optimized for use in landscape orientation, and Apple claims that the 13-inch model has twice the bass compared to the smaller 11-inch model.

While the previous iPad Air used an M1 chip, the new 11-inch and 13-inch models use the M2 chip. Apple says that it is up to 50% faster than the M1. Other additional features include support for the Apple Pencil “hover” feature, which was previously only available on Apple’s flagship iPad Pros. In addition, Apple has doubled the amount of base storage, which should appease critics. Now, the iPad Air comes with 128GB of standard storage, and the new Air also supports a maximum of 1TB of onboard storage.

The 11-inch and 13-inch iPad Airs are available for preorder today starting at $599 (the same as the previous generation model) and $799, respectively. The two tablets will ship next week.

The next generation of Apple Silicon is already nearing production, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The Apple-centric reporter was told by insiders that three distinct Apple M4 processors have been prepared. Interestingly, the new silicon is designed to revamp the Mac computer line with a new AI focus – addressing an IT industry trend where Apple is clearly lagging.

Gurman explains that Mac computers haven’t enjoyed the most buoyant sales in recent months. Machine sales saw a 27% drop in sales during the last fiscal year, and the tepid critical response to the new M3 computers was a sign that the move from M2 to M3 wasn’t enough to entice customers to part with their hard-earned cash.

With the IT industry riding waves of enthusiasm for all things AI, even if consumers are yet to be convinced of its on-device merits, Apple probably hopes that adding an AI focus to its M4 processors / marketing will help provide an uplift.

Donan, Brava, and Hidra

The Bloomberg report highlights three Apple M4 chip codenames, but we don’t have much in the way of hard specs, sadly. Gurman’s sources say that the entry-level M4 chip will be codenamed Donan. A more powerful SoC named Brava will address the mid-range market. Meanwhile, the Apple M4 Hidra will be the top-end SoC of the next generation. These three products look set to fill the roles of the M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max, perhaps.

So, Donan, Brava, and Hidra will undoubtedly deliver a step up in performance vs their M3 brethren, but we have no idea how much better they will be. With the AI-focus, you might expect a lot more dedicated processing to accelerate AI. However, Apple already introduced a “powerful” 16-core Neural Engine offering 18 TOPS with the M3 range (60% faster than M1 chips could manage). Few people may be using that built-in processing on the Mac day-to-day right now, though, and the M4’s presumably strengthened Neural Engine should have more to do if the insider-based info from Bloomberg is correct.

Whether more AI processing power (and marketing) can make a difference to the deceleration of Mac sales remains to be seen. Gurman says that the M4 chips will permeate the full Mac lineup from “new iMacs, a low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros, and Mac minis.” Though, this is no surprise. Hopefully, more direction and compelling AI application planning will be evident during the Apple WWDC, which kicks off on June 10.

Whatever happens, Apple’s competitors haven’t let their foot off the AI acceleration pedal for months. We also have exciting new chips like “100+ TOPS” Lunar Lake and the “breakthrough” Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite to look forward to later this year.

Apple's entry-level MacBook Air notebooks based on M2 processors were heavily criticized for their low-performance solid state drives, as the company decided to cut costs and sacrifice parallelism. However, we have some good news for those interested in Apple's latest M3-based MacBook Air laptops, discovered by Vadim Yuryev from Max Tech - as Apple's entry-level laptops now offer decent data transfer speeds. Nevertheless, their performance is still slower than a decent off-the-shelf PCIe 3.0 x4 drive.  

Apple's entry-level MacBook Air M3 featuring 256GB of solid-state storage uses two 3D NAND flash packages (supporting an unknown number of channels and CE targets per channel), which is a big difference compared to the base model of the MacBook Air M2 that came with 256GB of storage using one 3D NAND package. In brief, the reduced number of NAND channels and consequent two times lower parallelism dramatically affected the older system's storage performance. 

An entry-level M3-based MacBook Air with a 256GB SSD can now achieve a sequential read speed of 2,280.2 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 2,108.9 MB/s in the Blackmagic SSD speed test. This is significantly higher than a sequential read speed of 1,576.4 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 1,584.3 MB/s in the case of a base-spec M2-based MacBook Air with a 256GB drive. While storage subsystems of both products are slower compared to an entry MacBook Air M1 laptop with a 256GB SSD, the M3-based MBA is getting very close, and the difference will not be noticeable in the vast majority of real-world use cases. 

The storage performance enhancement of the 256GB MacBook Air M3 is particularly beneficial for multitasking and heavy productivity tasks on the base model that features only 8GB of RAM. MacOS tends to swap data that does not fit into RAM to NAND storage and then retrieve it, so fast solid-state storage is important for all Macs in general and entry-level Apple computers in particular. 

An avid reader with a DIY Windows PC would probably remember that the numbers demonstrated by an entry-level 2024 MacBook Air are akin to those of inexpensive mainstream SSDs with a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface from circa 2019. This reader will indeed be right as the best PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD (Teamgroup's MP34) can hit a 3,500 MB/s sequential read speed and a 2,900 MB/s sequential write speed (3,400 MB/s and 1,100 MB/s for a 256GB drive though), at least on paper. Then again, real-world performance differences depend on actual use cases. 

Apple's MacBook Air 256GB SSDs vs TeamGroup's MP34 256GB SSD

Data by Max Tech/YouTube and TeamGroup

In general, the entry M3 MacBook Air has successfully addressed the biggest issue of the M2 model, which is storage subsystem performance. It also added general-purpose and graphics oomph, as well as dual display support with the lid closed, which makes it a contender in the productivity desktop space. While the new baseline MacBook Air is $100 more expensive than its direct predecessor, it looks like its upgrades are worth it. Then again, there are plenty of laptop PCs that offer much higher performance in the $1,100 ballpark. It is also likely the PC will have cooling fans so it does not dramatically overheat.

UPDATE 3/9/2024, 10am PT: VancouverMac.ca has provided us with additional information about its services and Apple PCs storage upgrade capabilities. While the company officially advertises storage upgrades for M1-based Macs only, it says that upgrades for other Apple Silicon-based Macs are identical, but some parts may differ.

Once upon a time, Apple's MacBook used M.2-like SSD modules that could be easily replaced or upgraded. Still, starting from the 2015 MacBook 12 systems, the company began soldering SSD components down to motherboards to make laptops thinner, thus making upgrades virtually impossible. But is it so? A repair shop from Canada offers to upgrade storage on Apple Silicon-based Macs to up to 2TB at a price lower than Apple's.

"Thankfully, due to advanced soldering techniques, it is now possible to upgrade the storage space of the newest MacBooks to their highest configuration, for prices lower than what is originally quoted by Apple at purchase," a statement by VancouverMac.ca reads.

Upgrade complexities

Indeed, a story from April 2021 about a team of engineers who managed to resolder DRAM and NAND flash chips on an M1-based Mac Mini made quite a splash. The engineers from China upgraded the cheapest Mac Mini M1 machine with 8GB of LPDDR4X memory and 256 GB of solid-state storage to a much more decent machine with 16 GB of DRAM and 1 TB of NAND storage. While resoldering may not be a problem for experienced people, Mac upgrades are not simple.

In MacBooks with the T2 chip (2018-2020) and Apple Silicon system-on-chips (M1, M2, M3), the custom firmware of the soldered-down SSD is specific to the configuration of actual NAND chips (or alternative packages). Therefore, these chips cannot be replaced, as firmware modification is required.

Fortunately, according to VancouverMac, the Apple Configurator utility can reprogram the SSD automatically through its restore function on Apple Silicon-based Macs, which makes storage upgrades of these machines a complex but doable task.

The process involves replacing NAND packages with higher-capacity packages supported by Apple (i.e., you need to know which packages Apple supports) and then running Apple Configurator on the machine through another Mac via a USB-C port to reprogram the SSD configuration. The company has even uploaded a video describing the key steps of the upgrade. By contrast, with T2-equipped machines, everything is much more complicated.

SSD upgrade opportunities

Although the official page at VancouverMac says it offers storage upgrades for M1-based MacBook Air and MacBook Pro laptops, the company can upgrade Apple Silicon-based systems, including those based on M2 and M3-series processors, according to its founder.

The upgrade service can be performed for all of the below listed," said Sam Freeman, the owner of VancouverMac.ca. "The overall process is identical, but the parts used are different. The M1 Pro, M2, and M3 series use smaller chips with more dense connections, making it a bit harder, but it is very doable. I cannot confirm if parts are currently available for the M3 Macs since they are so new, but they will surely be released soon."

Pricing varies. For 2TB of presumably high-performance storage, the company wants $550 CAD/$407USD, which may be a little bit overwhelming considering the external storage options available, but it may be just right when you need high-performance internal storage.

Further upgrades

Given VancouverMac.ca's claimed capabilities, we asked whether the company can upgade storage devices of other Apple devices, such as M1/M2-based iPads, which share hardware with MacBooks. The company does not seem to offer such services for now though.

 "I do not have much experience with iPads/iPhones but based on my knowledge the DFU restore process should do the same thing for iPad which would mean this is possible on the iPads too," Freeman said.

Linux developer Hector Martin has discovered that YouTube is "deliberately crippling Firefox on Asahi Linux." Martin, also known by the handle Marcan, says YouTube downgrades the video quality and resolutions served to Firefox users on Macs with Arm-based systems, at least when they're not running MacOS. This behavior is particularly galling as Arm-devices can be very powerful in 2023. Asahi Linux, for example, is a project responsible for porting “a polished Linux experience” to Apple Silicon (Arm CPU architecture) Macs.

Marcan confirmed his YouTube downgrade on Arm hunch by changing the browser user agent (UA) and doing some A/B testing. After changing the Firefox UA parameters from ‘aarch64’ to ‘x86_64’ he says "suddenly you get 4K and everything!"

Digging a little deeper, Marcan checked the code that was responsible for the Arm reaction. He noted that YouTube would serve 1080p videos by default to x86_64 machines. However, the default for Arm devices was a mere 240p. Marcan reckons what he observed is an outdated bias, given the plethora of multi-core Arm processors in modern devices.

One of the reasons for the bias might have been uncovered, though. "YouTube thinks aarch64 Firefox is... a HiSense TV?!" noted the developer — specifically a HiSense 65a67gevs. YouTube doesn’t allow the option of 4K playback on this TV for some reason.

With the YouTube / Firefox on Arm relationship analyzed, Marcan wondered what Google's own Chrome browser was doing when running on Arm hardware. He found a surprising little Google hack: "Chromium on aarch64 pretends to be x86_64." Thus, YouTube playback in Chrome using Asahi Linux defaults to 1080p playback and can be nudged to 4K.

After verifying his observations, Marcan decided to act on what he discovered. He filed a bug report with Mozilla, with the hope of getting Firefox updates to "report bull**** architectures." Marcan also decided to add some workaround code to Asahi Linux.

There's some follow-up discussion below the source report on Mastodon and the Hacker News site. Some early comments thought it was reasonable that YouTube defaulted to 240p on Firefox / Arm. However, it was pointed out that the change of UA also facilitated 4K playback, which was not an available option on Firefox + Linux + aarch64. Another interesting comment noted that Firefox, Chrome, and Safari on modern MacOS (running Apple Silicon) all have the UA set "incorrectly" to x86_64 by the developers. Thankfully, it's pretty easy to change your browser UA information, so you can set it to whatever you want to see what benefits may be available.

YouTube has had more than its fair share of headlines recently. It recently started aggressively checking for any kind of browser and extension-based ad-blocking. Not long after YouTube scripts were propagated to do this spying, a privacy consultant based in Ireland decided to file a criminal complaint.  Also, last month Google was alleged to be crippling Firefox's performance by implementing video loading delays. YouTube released a statement in response to this accusation, but sadly the response seemed to be answering a question that hadn’t been asked — something about ad blockers. A UA switcher was again an easy solution to the issues observed.

CNBC Business News has shared the first video footage from inside Apple’s Silicon Valley HQ chip lab. The news organization’s Katie Tarasov visited the labs and talked with several senior Apple execs involved in hardware. She heard about the reasons behind the transition to bringing processor development in-house, the biggest achievements over the years, and the size and scale of the current operation.

The video tour starts in what is described as “a non-descript room filled with a couple hundred buzzing machines.” Here techies in lab coats are seen studiously pondering over components and PCBs, which we assume were taken from some of the 100s of buzzing machines mounted in racks.

Apple only started working on its processors in around 2008. At that time there were only 40 or 50 engineers, according to the CNBC report. However, that quickly ballooned with the first Apple-branded processor, the 2010 era A4, as used in the iPhone 4, and original iPad. The team got bigger through greater ambitions and acquisitions and in 2023 there are “thousands of engineers working across labs all over the world,” including those in the U.S. Israel, Germany, Austria, the U.K., and Japan.

John Ternus, a 22-year Apple veteran and the firm’s SVP of Hardware Engineering, said that the development and implementation of Apple Silicon is “one of the most, if not the most, profound changes at Apple,” in the last 20 years.

To say Apple’s SVP of Hardware Engineering was happy with the progress of Apple’s silicon design team seems like an understatement. “It was almost like the laws of physics had changed,” Ternus said about the advances offered by Apple Silicon. “All of a sudden we could build a MacBook Air that’s incredibly thin and light, has no fan, 18 hours of battery life, and outperformed the MacBook Pro that we had just been shipping.” He also asserted that “pretty much all Macs are capable of running Triple-A [games] titles.”

CNBC’s Tarasov also talked to the head of Apple Silicon, Johny Srouji. He highlighted that Apple Silicon is made only for Apple products, and thus the firm can “exactly and precisely build chips that are going to be targeted for those products, and only for those products.” The process offers great optimization and scalability choices.

It was interesting to hear from the head of Apple Silicon that the biggest changes in recent times have been in strengthening the GPU portion of the SoC. Srouji highlighted the addition of PC-like features such as hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading acceleration.

Of course, as well as the CPU and GPU, Apple has been developing its NPU for on-device AI acceleration. However, CNBC couldn’t draw info from any Apple execs about the rumored Apple GPT. When asked about the possibility of falling behind in AI, Srouji reportedly said, “I don’t believe we are.”

We still don’t expect any Apple SoC to include a modem soon. “We care about cellular, and we have teams enabling that,” said Srouji. Apple also wants to do its own Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips, and is reportedly working on them, too.

One of the last segments in the wide-ranging video was a chat about Apple’s reliance on TSMC. This is indeed seen as a risk factor, for various well-known reasons. It is thus hoped Samsung and Intel will become practical alternatives to TSMC for Apple, in the not-too-distant future.

Engineers from Frore Systems have integrated the company's innovative solid-state AirJet cooling system, which provides impressive cooling capabilities despite a lack of moving parts, into an M2-based Apple MacBook Air. With proper cooling, the relatively inexpensive laptop matched the performance of a more expensive MacBook Pro based on the same processor.

The lack of a fan is probably one of the main advantages of Apple's MacBook Air over its more performant siblings, but it also puts the laptop at a disadvantage. Fanless cooling doesn't have moving parts (which is a plus), but it also cannot properly cool down Apple's M1 or M2 processor under high loads, which is why a 13-inch MacBook Air powered by M1 or M2 system-on-chip is slower than 13-inch MacBook Pro based on the same SoC. However, making a MacBook Air run as fast as a 13-inch MacBook Pro is now possible. 

To do so, one needs to cool down M2 using the Frore System's AirJet solid-state active cooling system. It is as efficient as typical cooling systems with fans, yet it is smaller and more reliable, according to a video posted to YouTube by PC World. The AirJet-equipped 15-inch MacBook Air matched the performance of the M2-based MacBook Pro in the Cinebench R23 benchmark, a testament to its AirJet's efficiency in maintaining optimal operating temperatures. 

However, there is a catch. AirJet is a membrane-based cooling system that uses ultrasonic waves to push air through itself to remove heat. Although it does not use a fan, it still needs airflow. As a result, Frore had to alter MacBook Air's design to use its Airjet. The company's specialists added intake vents near the laptop's hinge and repurposed the speaker holes to serve as exhaust outlets. These modifications were crucial to integrating the AirJet in the slim MacBook Air chassis, demonstrating the practicality and adaptability of this cooling technology in real-world applications.

Despite its impressive performance and potential applications, the AirJet is unavailable for consumer purchase. Frore Systems has no plans to release a consumer version of its AirJets or kits for modifying existing devices. The demonstration with the MacBook Air serves primarily as a proof of concept, highlighting AirJet's capabilities. Looking forward, integrating AirJet technology in products from companies like Apple could lead to more efficient use of internal space, paving the way for innovations such as larger batteries or more compact device designs.

An avid reader would ask why Apple does not use AirJet cooling systems itself. There are several possible explanations. Firstly, Frore is a relatively small company whose production volumes may be too low for Apple. Secondly, the AirJet cooling technology is relatively new, and companies like Apple would ensure its reliability first before using it for high-volume devices.

Apple's M3-series of chips have started to enter PassMark's CPU benchmark database and continued tradition of their predecessors of being ahead of all rivals in single-thread workloads. Unfortunately for Apple, its M3 Max processor does not stand a chance against flagship offerings from Intel and AMD, which are, of course, more power hungry, in multi-thread workloads.

For now, Apple's 11-core M3 Pro leads in PassMark's single-thread CPU benchmark with 4,910 points — about 1.2% faster than Intel's Core i9-14900KF with 4,852 points. Apple's M3 Pro features an eight-wide execution, a 150 GB/s memory subsystem, and a 4.05 GHz frequency, while Intel's Core i9-14900KF boasts a six-wide execution, an 89.6 GB/s memory subsystem (though most i9-based systems feature higher bandwidth as they are used with enthusiast-grade memory), and a 6.0 GHz boost clock. Apple's win seems even more impressive given that the M3 Pro is a laptop system-on-chip (SoC) with a moderate power consumption.

Apple's 12-core M3 Pro and 16-core M3 Max processors are slightly behind their younger brother, but are still ahead of Intel's 13th Generation and 14th Generation core processors. Interestingly, even Apple's smartphone-oriented A17 Pro SoC beats Intel's Core i9-13900F and Core i7-14700K in the single-thread PassMark CPU benchmark.

As far as Apple's 16-core M3 Max SoC's performance in PassMark's multi-thread CPU benchmark, it scores 39,921 points, which is enough to beat Intel's Core i7-13700F (39,825) and be more or less on par with the 20-core M2 Ultra (40,893). However, flagship desktop offerings from AMD and Intel — Ryzen 9 7950X (63,230 points) and Core i9-14900K (60,823 points) — outperform the M3 Max by 58% and 52%, respectively. Of course, these parts consume a lot more power than does Apple's M3 Max — but for those who need maximum performance, this doesn't really matter.

There might be positive news for Apple. The company's 24-core M2 Ultra system-in-package featuring two M2 Maxes shows an excellent +85% scalability compared to one M2 Max. If Apple's 32-core M3 Ultra shows similar scalability, then with around 73,000 points in multi-thread workloads in PassMark's CPU benchmark it will be able to rival AMD's 32-core Ryzen Threadripper Pro 5975WX (75,777 points) and Intel's 36-core Xeon W9-3475X (67,227 points) at a fraction of power. Yet, AMD's 96-core Ryzen Threadripper Pro 7995WX (153,301 points) and Intel's 56-core Xeon W9-3495X (98,285 points) will still be far ahead of Apple's flagship offering.

Ever since Apple released its own M-series processors for desktop and laptop computers in 2020, these SoCs have dominated single-thread performance benchmarks because of their eight-wide execution as well as an advanced caching and memory subsystem. Apple's M3 can still beat everything in single-thread workloads, but when it comes to performance in multi-threaded workloads that use all the cores and power that they can possibly get, Apple's processors lag behind their rivals severely. 

According to Apple's FY23 earnings call, sales of Apple's desktop and laptop computers were down 34% year-over-year in Q4 FY2023. Q4 of FY2022 was the most successful quarter for Macs ever, but this represents the fourth consecutive quarter of YoY declines for Macs. Apple remains optimistic about the future of its PCs as its M3-based lineup looks more competitive (and generally more expensive) than the previous-generation M2-powered family.

Sales of Macs and iPhones Disappoint

Sales of Macs totaled $7.614 billion in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 and $29.357 billion for the whole, year, down nearly 34% and 27% year-over-year, respectively. While the declines look dramatic, fiscal 2022 was a record year for Macs in general as the company sold huge amounts of its high-performance M1 Pro and M1 Max-based MacBook Pro notebooks and Mac Studio desktops. Meanwhile, the company faced major shipments constraints in Q3 FY2022, which is why Q4 FY2022 was the record quarter for Macs ever.  

"In Mac, revenue came in at $7.6 billion, down 34% year-over-year from the prior year's record quarter," said Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, at the earnings call with financial analysts and investors (via SeekingAlpha). "This was due to challenging market conditions, as well as difficult compares against the supply disruptions and subsequent demand recapture we experienced a year ago." 

While comparison with Q4 FY2022 may be a bit off, there is another reason why sales of Macs decline: owners of Apple's PCs who wanted to get an Apple Silicon-based machine have already got one. Given that their M1-based desktops and notebooks are three years old at most, Q3 of calendar 2023 was not their time for an upgrade given mediocre performance difference between M1 and M2-series processors. Apple admits that only half of the Macs last quarter were bought by Mac owners, the rest of sales came from people who were new Apple customers.

"We have great confidence in our Mac line-up and are excited about the recently announced iMac and MacBook Pro powered by our M3 chips," said Cook. "Our installed base is at an all-time high and half of Mac buyers during the quarter were new to the product, driven by MacBook Air." 

Apple's iPad brought in $6.4 billion in revenue in Q4 FY2023, marking a 10% decrease compared to the same period last year. This downturn mirrors the situation seen with Mac sales in Q4 FY2022. Just like Macs, iPads were significantly impacted by supply chain disruptions in the June quarter, which led to an unusual spike in demand in the following September quarter as the pent-up demand was met.

But iPhones and Services Prosper

Apple's iPhone revenue saw an increase in Q4 FY2023, reaching $43.8 billion, a rise from the previous year's $42.6 billion. However, looking at the annual figures, iPhone revenue experienced a decline, falling to $200.6 billion from $205.5 billion the year before. 

While Apple's hardware business was a mixed bag both for Q4 FY2023 and for the whole year, the company's Services business thrived as the company's install base increased to two billion active devices. Revenue from services hit an record high, reaching $22.3 billion in Q4 FY2023 (up a 16% from Q2 FY2022) and 85.2 billion in FY2023 (up 9% from FY2022).

As Apple Increases R&D Spending to $30 Billion

Being the world's largest supplier of consumer electronics by revenue and the world's most valuable public company is a hard job. You not only need to meet customer's expectations, but also exceed those of investors. While Apple generally produces competitive and user-friendly products, it cannot force its customers to upgrade if subsequent models are moderately better than those on the market, especially amid economic downturn. Which is why some may consider Apple's results disappointing.  

But Apple still makes tons of money. The company earned $89.5 billion in Q4 FY2023 and $383.285 billion for the whole year. Despite lower sales, the company upped its research and development spending form $26.251 billion in FY2022 to $29.915 billion in FY2023, which makes the company one of the largest R&D spenders in the world.

Apple's A17 processor was the first chip to use TSMC's N3 (3nm-class) process technology, and this week, the company expanded its N3 lineup with a family of PC-oriented M3 chips for desktop and laptop computers. Analyst Jay Goldberg from Digits to Dollars believes the company spent as much as $1 billion on M3's design and tape-outs alone.

"We have to assume that [M3-series] tape out costs alone for the three [SoCs] has to be close to $1 billion," Goldberg wrote. "Very few companies can afford this large an undertaking."

Apple's M3 family consists of three fairly complex CPUs for now: the 25-billion-transistor M3 that's aimed at entry-level and mainstream desktops, laptops, and high-end tablets; the 37-billion-transistor M3 Pro for performance-mainstream machines; and the M3 Max that packs 92 billion transistors for high-end laptops and entry-level workstations. Each chip is designed to address different computing needs, from everyday tasks to professional coding, heavy engineering simulations, and video production.

Apple's vanilla M3, which comes with eight general-purpose cores and a new built-in GPU, is as complex as AMD's highly praised Phoenix processor (25 billion vs. 25.4 billion), whereas the M3 Pro and M3 Max are considerably more complex.

In fact, with 92 billion MOSFETs inside, the M3 Max is the most complex single-die processor released to date (though, based on what we know about some of the upcoming AI processors, not for long).

Apple used TSMC's N3 fabrication process to increase the economic efficiency of its M3 family, a risky move because the technology is relatively new -- but it looks like it has paid off. As chip detective @Frederic_Orange pointed out, Apple could presumably fit as many as 415 M3 dies on a single 300-mm wafer, which indicates a die size of around 146 mm^2.

By contrast, AMD's Phoenix (which has a similar complexity) has a die size of 178 mm^2. We can only guess whether Apple's M3 is cheaper to make than AMD's Phoenix based on rumors about TSMC's quotes, but smaller chips are typically easier to yield and produce. 

Apple spent $26.251 billion on R&D in 2022, and a significant part of this spending was assigned to chip design. The scale of investment in silicon, in general, and the M3-series SoCs, in particular, indicates that Apple is one of the few companies with the economic capability to undertake such development endeavors. 

Developing complex PC-oriented processors requires extended development cycles, often on the order of years, and intense capital investment. When it comes to an all-new platform — such as the Apple M3 family — the cost of development is staggering, particularly in Apple's case since the company tends to develop as much IP internally as possible. With M3, Apple not only uses its own custom general-purpose cores based on an Arm instruction set architecture but also packs an all-new GPU architecture supporting hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shaders, a new AI NPU, and a new multimedia engine.

When Apple introduced its M3 family of processors this week, it mentioned its GPU Dynamic Caching technology as one of the key advantages of its GPU architecture that allowed it to bring hardware-accelerated ray tracing to its M-series SoCs. Indeed, it looks like Apple has spent years developing this technology and filed the first patent that covers it in early 2020. 

Traditional GPUs operate on static caching mechanisms and fixed memory spaces which sometimes results in inefficient management and retrieval of page table information, underutilization of certain physical memory regions, and limitations of allocated memory for certain workloads. Apple's GPU Dynamic Caching ensures that cache and memory spaces are dynamically assigned based on the actual needs of different tasks and workloads. This adaptability ensures optimized memory usage, preventing wastage of memory resources and allowing tasks to access the memory they need (assuming that there is enough memory for a given task).

Dynamic caching and on-demand memory allocation can significantly benefit things like hardware ray tracing. Ray tracing is a computationally intensive rendering technique that simulates physical behavior of light to generate images. Given the complexity and variability of ray tracing computations, having the flexibility to allocate memory as needed and speed up access to frequently used data can significantly improve performance. What is also crucial for Apple is that its technology also allows to improve performance efficiency and in some cases reduce memory consumption, both of which are important considerations.

In addition to ray tracing, dynamic caching and on-demand memory allocation can benefit memory bandwidth-hungry graphics applications in general, so the technology possibly plays a role in improved performance of Apple M3's GPUs too. Meanwhile, mesh shading also plays a significant role in improving overall performance of Apple's new GPUs.

Earlier today, we reported on the newest raft of Apple Macs with the latest M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max processors, fresh from Apple’s ‘Scary Fast’ event. We discussed the differences between Apple’s alluring new silicon chips, but Twitter/X user High Yield has created some annotated die-shot images that provide a useful visual contrast between the trio of TSMC N3B fabricated processors.

The comparison graphic with its annotations and color coding helps show how different the members of the M3 family really are. The entry-level, to pro, to max changes are quite extraordinary, in a way that makes saying “My Mac has an M3 inside” almost meaningless.

High Yield’s color coding helps us quickly get a high-level view of the relative sizes of each of the different building blocks of a modern SoC, across the trio of processors shown here. As we move through the range, you can see that Apple engineers have prioritized certain features more than others.

CPU cores counts ramp up from 8 to 12 to 16 as we move from left to right in the graphic overview, so there's a doubling overall (ignoring core types). However, the bigger change is with the GPU, where there's a quadrupling of GPU cores moving from M3 to M3 Max. Likewise, it looks like Apple SoC designers have emphasized processor design features such as caches and I/O on the high-end chip. This is one way different processors in a family can target different intended workloads.

Though that might sound dismissive of the little Apple M3, its 25 billion transistor count is almost 2.5x more than AMD used in the highly capable Ryzen 7 5800H laptop APU. Looking at the M3 Max from the perspective of outside references, its 92 billion transistor count edges past AMD’s Epyc Genoa (90 billion transistors, 96 CPU cores) — a processor that sports 12 separate CPU chiplets along with a larger IO die. The M3 Max also uses significantly more transistors than Nvidia’s GH100 Hopper GPU (80 billion).

Of course, all of the GH100 is dedicated to GPU work, where Apple's M3 Max is a complete SoC handling a variety of workloads. Apple has shared some lofty performance claims for the new M3 range, and their respective CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs. Hopefully, we'll get our hands on some test machines featuring its latest silicon shortly to see if they live up to their billing.

The next significant step for Apple and its chipmaking partner TSMC will necessitate the move from FinFet to GAA. TSMC's future 2nm-class parts will be a very important transition for many of the giant tech companies.

Apple is poised to refresh its Mac lineup in an upcoming online-only event called 'Scary Fast,' with a focus on introducing new MacBook Pros and iMacs equipped with the latest M3-series processors, reports Bloomberg. The 'Scary Fast' description of the event might indicate that we will be dealing with high-performance M3 Pro and M3 Max processors produced on one of TSMC's N3 process technologies.

In the spotlight are the anticipated MacBook Pros, which are set to undergo significant internal enhancements. These new models are projected to house the advanced M3 Pro and M3 Max processors, marking a rather substantial leap from the previous M2-series. The processors have undergone a rigorous upgrade and gained both general-purpose cores and graphics clusters, as shown in the table.

The iMac is also reportedly slated for an update, marking its first in over 900 days. While the external design is expected to retain its current aesthetics, the internals will see a revamp. The new models are predicted to feature Apple's M3 chip, coupled with improved GPU configurations and a transition to USB-C connectors, signifying a modernization of the iMac’s architecture.

Notably, according to the Bloomberg report, the event holds additional significance as it aligns with the recovery of the personal computing market from the post-pandemic-induced slump. 

Apple's unveiling is also timed to capitalize on the holiday season, a critical period for boosting sales. The company aims to leverage its new offerings to boost sales after declining sales in previous quarters. The refreshed Mac lineup could play a crucial role in driving a resurgence in Apple's Mac revenue streams, supporting its generally high financial performance driven by iPhones.

In addition to the seemingly imminent unveilings, Apple is reported to have a pipeline of future releases, including new MacBook Airs and updated iPads. However, these products are earmarked for launch in subsequent events, extending into 2024 and beyond, indicating a sustained strategy of innovation and product enhancement in Apple's roadmap, according to Bloomberg.

Being one of the founders of Arm, Apple has always had a longstanding relationship with the CPU design company, and its own custom Arm-based SoCs power its smartphones, tablets, PCs, and other electronics. Recently, the two companies extended their license agreement by almost 20 years, till 2040, which is an extremely long period for the high-tech industry. 

"We have entered into a new long-term agreement with Apple that extends beyond 2040, continuing our longstanding relationship of collaboration with Apple and Apple's access to the Arm architecture," a statement by Arm reads.

Apple offers a wide range of products spanning various categories, including high-end devices such as Mac desktops and MacBook laptops, iPhones, iPads, and Apple TV set-top boxes, all of which rely on custom system-on-chips (SoCs) built around specially tailored Arm cores. Furthermore, gadgets like the Apple Watch, AirPods, and Homepod Mini are equipped with system-in-packages (SiPs) that harness Arm technologies too. Apple also incorporates Arm cores in its controllers, such as the T2, W3, U1, and others. In short, all of the products carrying an Apple logo also happen to carry multiple Arm cores. 

Signing a long-term license that spans over 15 years before Arm goes public later this year is certainly Apple's vote of confidence in Arm's technologies. While Arm has hundreds of clients, many of them are industry behemoths like Apple, AMD, Nvidia, and Samsung, it doesn't look like the company has disclosed similar long-term licensing deals with any of them.

Although virtually all of Apple's products rely on the Arm instruction set architecture today, the company has been exploring the RISC-V ISA since at least mid-2021, so the consumer electronics giant is certainly not putting its eggs into one basket. There are many reasons why Apple is interested in RISC-V beyond risk management. Since RISC-V is an open-source ISA, it can be innovated quickly and without informing its original inventors. As a result, if Apple wants to introduce something brand-new and cannot wait for Arm to innovate its ISA, it will have to turn to RISC-V instead.

In addition to licensing Arm's ISA, Apple will also be one of the anchor investors in the upcoming Arm IPO.

Apple's M3-series system-on-chips is expected to get a major performance upgrade compared to predecessors since they are projected to be made on TSMC's N3 (3 nm-class) fabrication processor and use all-new CPU and GPU microarchitectures. Indeed, the highest-end M3 Ultra will feature 32 CPU cores and an 80-cluster GPU, but the entry-level M3 will retain eight cores, a Bloomberg report suggests.

M3: Up to Eight Cores

Apple's vanilla M1 and M2 SoCs are used for Mac Mini, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro 13, and iMac systems, which are quite popular. The company's upcoming M3 ix expected to retain eight general-purpose cores (four high-performance and four energy-efficient cores) and an integrated GPU with up to 10 clusters. The first systems on their base are expected to hit the market earlier this year. 

Apple's M3 will reportedly be the first SoCs from the company's third-generation PC processors and will also be the developers N3 chip designed for desktops and laptops. Apparently, the company decided not to increase core count in this SoC compared to M2, perhaps because it wanted to ensure the lowest possible power consumption or was sure that architectural advantages coupled with higher clocks will ensure a noticeable performance boost, or just wanted to maximize yields and keep costs down.

M3 Pro: Up to 14 Cores

The situation will get substantially better with M3 Pro that is projected to get 14 general-purpose cores (eight performance cores, six efficiency cores) in its top-end configuration, but its range-topping GPU will get 20 clusters, up from 19 clusters in M2 Pro. The M3 Pro in its maximum configuration will be more powerful than M2 Max in general-purpose workloads, but the latter will still have an edge in graphics applications.

Apple's M3 Pro and M3 Max-based machine will likely hit the market sometimes in 2024.

M3 Max: Up to 16 cores

When it comes to M3 Max SoC, it is rumored to get 16 general purpose cores (12 performance cores and four energy-efficient cores) as well as up to 40 GPU clusters. Getting four additional high-performance cores is a big deal and will certainly bring substantial benefits to demanding software that M3 Max is architected to run. These will likely end up in high end MacBook Pros, the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.

M3 Ultra Up to 32 Cores

Meanwhile, the M3 Ultra system-in-package consisting of two M3 Max chips will therefore get 32 CPU cores and up to 80 GPU clusters. While 32 cores sounds quite massive when we talk about desktops, workstation-grade processors from AMD and Intel already have 56 – 64 cores and it remains to be seen what they are going to offer when Apple's M3 Ultra-based Mac Studio or Mac Pro systems are available in the second half of 2024. 

While Bloomberg's Mark Gurman tends to be accurate with his reports about future Apple's products, he is still an unofficial source and information from him should be taken with a grain of salt.

Leaked information about another new Mac under test at the Apple Campus has been published by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. In his regular Apple-focused newsletter, Gurman claims he has new information about the base-level Apple Silicon M3 chip. Thr technology reporter asserted that this SoC would feature eight CPU cores, ten GPU cores, and 24 GB RAM.

Gurman reckons the newly uncovered base configuration M3 chip being tested at Apple’s HQ resides within a soon-to-be refreshed Mac Mini. Its eight CPU cores are split evenly between performance and efficiency cores (so, 4P + 4E cores). Moreover, he claims this SoC features 10 graphics processor cores and 24 GB of memory. With Apple Silicon devices, the SoCs come with memory on-chip, which is good for processor access and efficiency, but not so good for those who might wish to upgrade their system later.

Notably, the purported base-level M3 chip, highlighted above, has the same number of CPU and GPU cores as the base M2 it will replace. There will likely be other improvements present in the M3 so that Apple can boast about various advances with the new generation chips. It is hard to know exactly what changes will be delivered on an architectural level, but one thing that looks quite certain is a move to TSMC's N3 (3nm-class) fabrication technology, which should provide improved efficiency and density.

According to the Bloomberg tech reporter, the story won't be the same for higher-tier M3 chips. Previous leaks and insider indications point to the Apple M3 Pro increasing core counts compared to prior generations, with 12 CPU and 18 graphics cores. Meanwhile, next-generation Mac power users will want to seek out the M3 Max, with a purported 14 CPU cores and over 40 graphics cores.

If you are a happy user of the Apple Mac platform, you will naturally wonder when Apple will roll out its first Macs with the M3 processor. Current indications are that there will be a big Mac launch event not too far from now – in October. Reports suggest that Apple’s Mac business is currently amid a double-digit quarterly decline, so the arrival of the M3 can’t come soon enough to rekindle interest from upgraders and new converts.

The launch of Apple's Mac Pro based on its M2 Ultra processor formally marked the completion of the company's transition from Intel's CPUs to its own system-on-chips, which took about three years. The transition spurred users of Macs to upgrade and encouraged users of Windows to switch to Macs. Roughly half of Apple's PCs bought in Q2 were purchased by new users.

"This past quarter, we were pleased to complete the transition to Apple Silicon for the entire lineup," said Tim Cook, Apple's chief executive, at the company's conference call with analysts and investors (via SeekingAlpha). "This transition has driven both strong upgrade activity and a high number of new customers. In fact, almost half of Mac buyers during the quarter were new to the product. We also saw reported customer satisfaction of 96% for Mac in the U.S."

Indeed, the transition to Apple Silicon helped Apple to boost sales of its Mac computers and gain market share. The company controlled 6.3% of the PC market, with 4.077 million Macs sold in Q2 2019. During Q2 2023, the company commanded 8.6% of the PC market, with 5.3 million units sold. Meanwhile, in Q1 2022, the firm owned 9.3% of the desktop and laptop market as it supplied 7.342 million PCs during the quarter, many of which were sold to first-time users, and many were upgrades.

Controlling the hardware and software enables Apple to integrate various special-purpose accelerators into its SoCs and maximize performance in select applications. In addition, it allows it to precisely tailor its software for these SoCs, which promises to reduce the number of glitches and offer decent performance. Finally, it allows the company to maximize its profit margins now that it does not have to pay for CPUs to Intel. Unfortunately, with the transition to its Apple Silicon, Apple no longer supports third-party GPUs with its Mac Pro PCs, which will frustrate users who need high-performance GPUs.

Since the PC market in Q2 2023 was down 13.4% year-over-year in terms of unit shipments, it is not surprising that Macs generated $6.8 billion in revenue for Apple during the quarter, down 7% year-over-year. It is also noteworthy that Apple sold more PC units than it did in Q2 2022, according to IDC. A reason why Apple's Mac revenue was down amid unit sales growth was probably because many first-time users bought inexpensive PCs. In contrast, in Q2 2022, the company finally ramped up sales of its premium M2 Pro and M2 Max-based MacBook Pros.

Also, it is evident that in Q2 2023, Apple's PC business performed better than the PC businesses of Lenovo, Dell, and Acer, at least regarding unit sales growth. Meanwhile, the company expects Mac and iPad revenue to decline in the ongoing quarter.

"We expect the revenue for both Mac and iPad to decline by double digits year-over-year due to difficult compares, particularly on the Mac," said Cook. "For both products, we experienced supply disruptions from factory shutdowns in the June quarter a year ago and were able to fulfill significant pent-up demand in the year-ago September quarter."

Apple's first personal computers based on its next-generation M3 system-on-chip may be unveiled as early as this October, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who tends to have accurate information from Apple's supply chain. If Apple follows its traditional launch patterns, it makes sense to expect the company to reveal inexpensive M3-based laptops and desktops first. Yet, this is speculation at this point. 

Apple has scheduled a launch event in October, and based on past history, the company is set to introduce new Macs there, Bloomberg asserts. Given that Apple has just released numerous new Macs based on M2 Ultra and M2 Max system-on-chips, it is unlikely that the company will refresh its Mac Studio or even MacBook Pro with any new SoCs. Therefore, the company may well introduce new MacBook Air 13, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro 13, or even iMac (which has not yet gotten an M2 treatment) powered by shiny new M3 SoCs. 

Of course, the assumption about the M3 arrival this October could be entirely wrong. Instead, Apple could release an all-new iMac lineup based on M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Ultra SoCs. Yet, being a notebook-centric company, Apple could be more inclined to update its 13-inch laptops with a new SoC. 

An avid reader would probably ask what to expect from Apple's M3, which is rumored to be made on TSMC's N3 (3nm-class) fabrication technology that promises higher performance efficiency and higher transistor density compared to TSMC's N5P production node used for M2. At this point, it is hard to guess the exact improvements, but the company has a number of options, including increased general-purpose core count, enhanced GPU, and additional accelerators, just to name a few.

Keep in mind that the information comes from an unofficial source, and plans tend to change, so while it is logical to expect the arrival of Apple's first M3 machines about 1.5 years after the first M2-based products, it remains to be seen what Apple has to show in October.

Apple is finally finishing its move away from Intel with a new Mac Pro using M2 Ultra. It is configurable with up to 192GB of memory, will start at $6,299, and be available starting next week.

Every Mac Pro will use M2 Ultra, with 24 CPU cores and up to a 76-core GPU. The chassis shares its physical design with the last Intel Xeon Mac Pro, and vertical and rack-mounted options will be available.

Rather than using AfterBurner for ProRes video as an optional card, Apple says the new PC will have the power of seven AfterBurner cards. It can ingest 22 camera feeds direct to Pro Res.

There are 8 Thunderbolt ports, as well as dual Gigabit Ethernet. PCIe Gen 4 expansion cards are an option now, with five slots for video, networking, audio and video IO cards. However, there is no word yet on third-party graphics.

Apple initially said that its transition away from Intel chips would take two years. That was in 2020. While the Mac Pro pushed that into three-year territory, it seems the transition is now complete. Apple has finally moved its entire product line away from Intel.

Apple's transition to its own-designed M-series silicon caused shockwaves throughout the industry that are still reverberating. As it prepares to debut its latest crop of Macs with M2 chips, a highly reputable insider has shared some of the key specs of the first Apple M3 chip, which is claimed to be already in testing. 

Based on his insider sources, Mark Gurman of Bloomberg outlines the upcoming Apple M3 Pro SoC as offering: 12 CPU cores, 18 graphics cores, and 36GB of onboard RAM. The M3 SoC is also claimed to be the first Apple Silicon M-series chip built at 3nm.

According to the report, the first tantalizing glimpses of the Apple M3 Pro have emerged because developers are testing systems based upon this new silicon for third-party app compatibility. This is one of the most common and reliable ways we get a bead on Apple's pre-release processors.

An Apple App Store developer shared their insider info with Gurman regarding what is thought to be the "the base-level version of what will be the M3 Pro coming next year." Remember, that Apple will be likely creating several variants of the M3, just like it did with the prior series, so later we will cover speculation about what an M3 Max and Ultra SoCs could deliver.

Focusing first upon the Apple M3 Pro, Bloomberg's sources indicate that of the 12 CPU cores there will be six high-performance cores (P-cores), accompanied by six power-efficient cores (E-cores). The CPU cores will be accompanied by 18 GPU cores, and 36GB of RAM. 

These numbers represent improvements across the board, but we don't know about any architectural improvements which will undoubtedly be present in the M3 chips. Additionally, the new TSMC N3 process should provide some clock / efficiency benefits, in addition to allowing Apple to pump up the silicon density / core counts in the same chip sizes.

* = pre-launch data from Bloomberg sources

Gurman reckons that the first Apple Macs with M3 chips will arrive around late 2023 / early 2024. His sources say that among the first machines getting this 3nm silicon upgrade will be "M3-based iMacs, high-end and low-end MacBook Pros, and MacBook Air."

We've covered the leaks, and are now moving onto unashamed speculation, so please get your salt shaker ready. Extrapolating the M3 Pro to the 'usual' Max and Ultra SKUs might mean that an M3 Max will sport up to 14 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores, and the M3 Ultra coming with up to 28 CPU cores and over 80 GPU cores.

Of course, Apple hopes the arrival of M3 silicon and new Macs will reanimate lack luster sales. The Apple M2 hasn't been inspirational, and Bloomberg highlights the recent 31% slide in Mac sales as testament to this. However, Apple had done comparatively well in the face of the general macroeconomic malaise until recently. Upgraders skipping a gen look like they will get a lot more cores for the money, more capacious base memory, as well as what could be some tasty architectural tweaks delivered with the M3 generation.

To get a measure of the newest current cream of the crop Apple Macs, please check out our review of the Apple MacBook Pro (2023) with M2 Pro and M2 Max processor options.

Apple’s bean counters surely form one of the most powerful forces within the organization, despite much of the company's high-profile success being tied to design. A case in point is provided by one of Apple’s leading new consumer products, the 2023 14-inch MacBook Pro, which has had its design significantly steered by pricing fluctuations in the materials and components markets. 

iFixIt recently tore down one of the laptops, and was surprised at the change in SoC size, cooler size, and NAND performance. Chief Analyst at SemiAnalysis, Dylan Patel, was conscripted to shine a light on these changes and provide an explanation.

Why Is the Heatsink Smaller?

Opening up the new 2023 14-inch MacBook Pro M2 for the first time, the iFixIt team had expected the cooling solution to be beefed-up and bolstered compared to the previous M1 Pro version. After all, the M2 Pro inside this laptop was trumpeted as packing 40 billion transistors — nearly 20 percent more than M1 Pro, and double the amount in M2. It was also claimed to provide 200GB/s of unified memory bandwidth — twice that of M2. More usefully, compared to the direct previous-gen predecessor, the M2 Pro was claimed by Apple to have a CPU that's about 20% faster and a GPU up to 30% faster.

So, the heatsink / cooling assembly being immediately noticeably smaller was quite a surprise for the tech disassembly experts. Then, when iFixIt deshielded the M2 Pro, they immediately saw the new SoC was much smaller, with the main reason being the new onboard RAM configuration.

In the picture above, you can see the new SoC to the right. Patel explained that Apple instigated this change when the ABF substrates were in very short supply, so optimizing to this design constraint was highly pragmatic. The way Apple chose to do this is by changing from the dual-8GB LPDDR5 RAM configuration to quad-4GB LPDDR5 RAM chips.

NAND Supply Pinches Performance

We reported on the unfortunate impact of Apple’s NAND configuration choices for the entry-level 2023 14-inch MacBook Pro (M2 Pro, 512GB) last week. The reason for the tangible speed downgrade, in brief, is that the 512GB is split over two 256GB modules, rather than four 128GB modules, cutting the bandwidth to the controller. Patel asserts that 128GB modules are increasingly in short supply as NAND makers shift production to higher capacities, so using the larger capacity modules is much more economical. It's a shame that Apple didn’t just give entry-level users more storage, but the company has always been conservative with storage, offering high-priced upgrades.

Nearly all of Apple’s Macs have transitioned to homegrown Apple Silicon, erasing the company’s dependence on Intel processors. However, there is still one holdout left: the Mac Pro. The current generation Mac Pro was launched in 2019 and hasn’t seen any meaningful updates since then. However, a new version is on the way that will finally make the transition to Apple Silicon. 

Earlier this month, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggested that the new Mac Pro would support modular graphics courtesy of an expansion port on the motherboard. However, Gurman reversed that claim yesterday, suggesting that the Mac Pros “may lack user upgradeable GPUs.” Apple’s current Mac Pro is powered by Intel Xeon processors and AMD Radeon Pro W6000X Series RDNA2 graphics cards. No explanation was given for this pullback from his initial reporting, but that’s not the only bad news.

Gurman further states that the new Mac Pro won’t support external GPUs. If this reporting is accurate, customers should think carefully about their future graphics needs at the time of purchase. In this case, the new Mac Pro’s GPU will allegedly be available in up to a 76-core configuration or double what’s available with the maxed-out M2 Max SoC available on the new 2023 MacBook Pros.

We already knew that the Mac Pro would lack user-replaceable RAM, so adding the GPU to the mix will be a bitter pill to swallow for Apple enthusiasts. However, Mac Pro customers will still have the option to upgrade their SSD storage via two internal slots or external Thunderbolt 4 ports.

The limited upgrade options for the Mac Pro will make for an interesting comparison with the similarly upgrade-averse Mac Studio. The Mac Studio is currently available with M1 Max and M1 Ultra SoCs, and will likely soon receive upgrades to M2 Max and M2 Ultra SoCs. It’s possible that Apple could reserve the high-end 76-core versions of the M2 Ultra for the Mac Pro.   

The Mac Studio starts at $1,999 with a M1 Max SoC ($3,999 with a M1 Ultra), while the Mac Pro starts at $5,999. The Mac Pro costs nearly $54,000 fully decked out with a 28-core Xeon W processor, 1.5B of DDR4 memory, dual Radeon Pro W690X GPUs, an Afterburner card and an 8TB SSD.

Unnamed sources have reached out to developer Kuba Wojciechowski with an extensive set of specifications for the upcoming Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 4 SoC. This is an important processor for the PC industry that promises to deliver a similar impact for Windows PCs to that of Apple Silicon in the MacOS and iOS device universe. The SD 8cx Gen 4 is being developed as the first PC processor that features Arm cores optimized by the Nuvia team, now part of Qualcomm. Nuvia was formed by three senior Apple execs who departed the Cupertino company after the first Apple Silicon (M1) projects had been successfully delivered.  

In brief, Wojciechowski stated that the information he shared back in November, about the codename ‘Hamoa’ desktop PC processor with up to 12 (8P+4E) Nuvia Phoenix-based Oryon cores, still stands. Now he has added that the Performance cores are being tested at around 3.4 GHz, and the Efficiency cores at approximately 2.5 GHz. The cores are clustered in blocks of four, with 12MB of shared L2 cache, and there is also 8MB of L3 cache. Additionally, the SD 8cx Gen 4 design features, 12MB of system cache and 4MB for graphics purposes, according to the Twitter thread.

As ever with leaks, take the news with a pinch of salt until it can be verified.

The extensive leak also suggests that the top model(s) of Qualcomm’s next gen chip for PCs, i.e. those featuring the full complement of 12 cores, will also support discrete GPUs over 8 lanes of PCIe 4.0. Another 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0 can be allocated for NVMe storage use, and PCIe 3.0 is there to support stuff like the Wi-Fi card and/or modem. Apparently, Wi-Fi 7 is supported by the upcoming SoC and those who want cellular connectivity will have an external X65 option. Systems packing an SD 8cx Gen 4 will be able to support up to 64GB of 8-channel LPDDR5x, according to the recent leak.

Another key spec of a Qualcomm SD 8cx Gen 4 powered PC will be the integrated Adreno 740 GPU. This is the same GPU as in the previous Qualcomm processor for Windows on Arm PCs, and its supports APIs like DirectX 12, Vulkan 1.3, OpenCL as well as DirectML - but remember there will be discrete GPU support in top-end configurations.

Some other specs shared include; the support for UFS 4.0 storage, dedicated AI processing with the Hexagon Tensor Processor, and AV1 codec support. I/O support should extend to twin USB3 (10Gbps) ports, plus a trio of USB4 ports which also can be used for video out and up to 5K+4K+4K displays displays. 

Wojciechowski estimates that the Qualcomm SD 8cx Gen 4 could mean his big 300W PC could be made redundant by a compact new 100W model. Of course, there will be great benefits to laptop designs too, as long as the Nuvia team lives up to its own hype.

Qualcomm management previously stated that the first Nuvia CPU packing chips would be sampled by device partners towards the end of last year, with devices launching for consumers in late 2023 to early 24.

Significant news arrives from Asahi Linux, the project that’s attempting, and actually succeeding, to get an operating system that’s not macOS running natively on Apple Silicon Macs. It has hit an important milestone: a graphics driver that brings work-in-progress OpenGL 2 support to the distro. Meanwhile, the M-chips’ journey toward mainstream Linux support took a step forward too.

The new driver, which hasn’t passed OpenGL conformance tests and is very much an alpha, can run desktop environments such as Gnome and Plasma with hardware acceleration. The developers are still working on the driver, bringing in more OpenGL 2 features and a planned Vulkan expansion in the works. “We estimated that we could ship working OpenGL 2 drivers much sooner than a working Vulkan 1.0 driver, and we wanted to get hardware accelerated desktops into your hands as soon as possible. For the most part, those desktops use OpenGL, so supporting OpenGL first made more sense to us than diving into the Vulkan deep end,” reads a blog post authored by Alyssa Rosenzweig and Asahi Lina.

The driver is an opt-in release, meaning you’ll have to install it on your Linux-Mac using the pacman package manager. It’s unclear at the moment whether the driver can run Crysis, but Quake 3 in 4K at 60fps appears to be within its capabilities, and it runs desktops at the same speed.

In other news, support for M-series chips in the mainline Linux kernel also saw an important improvement this week, with an Apple Silicon CPU frequency-scaling driver being merged into the Linux kernel’s 6.2 release. 

Hector Martin, Asahi Linux’s lead developer, explained on kernel.org: “This driver implements CPU frequency scaling for Apple Silicon SoCs, including M1, M1 Max/Pro/Ultra, and M2. Each CPU cluster has its own register set, and frequency management is fully automated by the hardware; the driver only has to write one register. There is boost frequency support, but the hardware will only allow their use if only a subset of cores in a cluster are in non-deep-idle. Since we don't support deep idle yet, these frequencies are not achievable, but the driver supports them. They will remain disabled in the device tree until deep idle is implemented, to avoid confusing users. This driver does not yet implement the memory controller performance state tuning that usually accompanies higher CPU p-states. This will be done in a future patch.”

Benchmarks for Apple’s unannounced but almost certainly real M2 Max have appeared in Geekbench results, which shows a 12-core processor running at 3.54GHz and backed by 96GB of RAM. The rumored chip, which would be used in forthcoming MacBook Pro and Mac Studio models, offers a slight increase in performance over the existing M1 Max if the Geekbench run is accurate.

The Geekbench 5 results are for a 'Mac14,6' computer running on unreleased macOS 13.2 software. It manages a single-core score of 1,853 and a multi-core score of 13,855. If accurate, this is a little disappointing, as an eight-core M2 MacBook Pro hits 1,899 in the same single-core benchmark. However, the greater number of cores in the M2 Max machine sees it pull ahead in the multi-core ranking, with the M1 scoring 8,737 (5,000 points behind). However, all the M-class Macs trounce an Intel iMac from 2020, with that machine's Core i7-10700K at 3.8GHz scoring 1,250 in the single-core test and 8,157 in the multi-core.

A report from Taiwan's DigiTimes claims Apple will move from the M2's current 5nm TMSC process to a 3nm node for the M2 Pro. Of course, Apple hasn't announced this development, but manufacturing capacity at TSMC was reportedly booked by Apple back in the summer. 

The previous generation M1 chips were eventually available in four guises: vanilla, Pro, Max and Ultra, with the upper-level chips having more cores and beefier GPUs. While the Mac mini, iMac, MacBook Air, a few MacBook Pros and the iPad Pro got basic chips, most MacBook Pros come with a choice of M1 Pro or M1 Max, with the new Mac Studio able to be specced with an M1 Ultra, which is two M1 Pro chips stuck together. While the M1 has eight or 10 CPU cores, the differences between the chips are mainly expressed in the number of GPU cores and the amount of RAM in the package.

It's not unreasonable to expect M2 to go the same route, and while so far we've only seen M2 in the 2022 MacBook Air and a single MacBook Pro model (as well as an iPad Pro), we expect the processor to make its way through the entire Mac computer range, even perhaps infiltrating the Mac Pro, which is still an Intel-only zone.

It turns out that Apple has baked in support into its Apple Silicon processors for an instruction that was designed for Intel's 8080 processor that debuted back in 1974, using a secret undocumented extension to execute the very infrequently-used instructions, thus boosting emulation performance.

Apple’s Rosetta 2 is part of macOS that allows applications written for Intel processors to run on Apple Silicon-equipped Macs, and it works rather well. Named for the Rosetta Stone, which allowed Egyptologists to begin decoding the ancient hieroglyphic writing system in the 1820s. Rosetta has been equally mysterious, but may have begun to give up its secrets, as detailed in a blog post by Australian security researcher Dougall Johnson, in which he reveals an undocumented extension while discussing why Rosetta 2 is so fast. 

The secret extension appears to alter the way the processor stores parity and adjust flags from an application, to provide more accurate emulation. The story is taken up by web developer and retro computing enthusiast Blake Patterson, who explains how and why it does this, with the help of Johnson’s posts on Mastodon.

The whole thing can be traced back to the Intel 8080 from 1974, which was the company’s second-ever chip. This 8-bit microprocessor handled its adjust and parity flags in a particular way, using them to indicate whether to carry numbers in a binary-coded decimal operation, and this has persisted through to today’s x64 chips even though it’s hardly ever used by modern applications. 

The Arm architecture used by Apple Silicon, being unrelated to x64, has no such functionality, so it needed to be emulated. Otherwise, some Intel software wouldn’t work on the new Macs, and computing the same operation without the 8080’s flag-handling would use five times as many instructions and slow the Mac down. 

Rosetta 2 recompiles a binary application meant for an Intel processor at launch rather than providing real-time emulation, but cannot tell if the adjust and parity flags will be used by the app. It uses bits 26 and 27 of the Arm flags register to emulate the 8080’s handling of them to avoid needing to go the long way round every time.

It would break the Arm specification to have this running all the time, so the Apple Silicon processors only do this when running Rosetta 2 - Johnson points out that it doesn’t work when the Apple processor is running a Linux VM, as the processor isn’t as configurable in this situation. 

While not exactly Earth-shattering news, it’s a fascinating insight into the workings of an extremely clever and performant piece of software, albeit one that - in the same way the original Rosetta was introduced in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and retired in 10.7 Lion - is likely to fade away once Apple Silicon is a few more generations old.