Sales of MacBooks have decreased by over 40% in recent months due to a lacklustre demand for consumer electronics. The current spike in M3 silicon development rumors suggests Apple isn’t aiming to slow down the release frequency for new products, which is good news for the Mac industry, which needs a boost.
Apple began developing new 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models, as well as a new entry-level MacBook Pro, back in March, as was previously reported.
These would have a brand-new M3 chipset that was created using TSMC’s 3nm process technology for up to 15% higher performance and 30% less power consumption.
M3 Chipset of Apple
The entry-level M3 chipset is anticipated to appear before the end of the year, but according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, Apple may postpone the introduction of the new Macs by a few months.
Although the Cupertino business is rumored to have reserved 90% of TSMC’s 3nm capacity for production of A17 and M3 chipsets this year, the yields are still currently poor.
The most current estimates indicate that TSMC was able to produce its N3 node at a yield rate of about 55%, which is decent for this level of research but not sufficient for mass production.
There are around 450 dies per wafer with a base M3 die size of 135 to 150 sq mm, and nearly half of them are destroyed because of flaws.
Considering that Apple will only pay between $16,000 and $17,000 per wafer at the moment, TSMC wants to increase yields by about 5% every three months.
Gurman claims that Apple is also testing a 12-core CPU, 18-core GPU, and 36-gigabyte RAM M3 Pro prototype. For comparison, the M2 Pro had a maximum of 32 GB of RAM and 10 CPU cores.
The M3 Max and M3 Ultra should see the same boosts, but Apple will probably hold off on trial production of those two models until TSMC has perfected its N3E node.
According to reports, the business is still on schedule to introduce the long-rumored 15-inch MacBook Air with an M2 chip at WWDC in June.
A secret AR/VR headgear that Apple CEO Tim Cook is eager to show off over the design team’s reservations may also make its debut.
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