A List of Apple's Upcoming SoCs Leaks: Four Chips in Development
Apple is reportedly prepping four SoCs.
Longhorm (@never_released) a well-known leaker with a fairly good track record has published what is claimed to be a list of Apple's upcoming system-on-chips. If the information is correct, then the company is working on at least four SoCs for various upcoming devices. Since the information comes from one unofficial source and cannot be verified, it should be taken with a grain of salt.
Upcoming Apple SoCs:T600x: t6000, t6001T811x: t8110, t8112February 3, 2021
Apple is working on two other families of its SoCs, including the T600x as well as the T811x, according to Longhorm. The T600x family reportedly includes the T6000 and T6001 chips, whereas the T811x comprises of the T8110 and T8112 SoCs.
The source does not reveal what these processors are for. Meanwhile, Apple's smartphone and tablet SoCs in the recent years carried internal quad-digit 8000-series model numbers (and 7000-series before that), which might mean that the T8110 and 8112 SoCs are designed for future iPhones, iPads, and smaller Mac computers.
Since nothing is known about Apple's T6000-series SoCs, it is possible that these chips will be used for the company's more advanced machines, such as higher-end iMacs, MacBook Pros, or the rumored Mac Pro Mini. Last December it was reported that Apple was working on variety of SoCs packing up to 20 general-purpose CPU cores for its higher-end iMacs as well as MacBook Pros, so it is possible that the T6000 family is indeed designed for these kind of applications.
What is noteworthy is that Apple uses different model numbers for its future SoC lineups, which may mean nothing too special, or may indicate that these processor families will be considerably different. Perhaps, they may even use different microarchitectures, different iterations of the same microarchitecture, or certain completely different architectural features, such as a multi-level hybrid memory subsystem.
Longhorn was reportedly the first to disclose Apple's internal names for the A14 Bionic (T8101) and the M1 (T8103, which was initially referred to as the A14X) in September 2019. Eventually, the model numbers were confirmed by other sources.
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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.