① Apple will hold a new product launch conference on Tuesday (10/31) at 8 a.m. Beijing time; ② A well-known informant revealed that in the face of Qualcomm's steady pressure, Apple will release M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max chips in one go tomorrow; ③ Since the A17 Pro, which also used 3nm before, has not experienced a “significant increase,” the outside world is also closely monitoring the state of the M3 chip.
Source: Finance Association
According to the schedule,$Apple (AAPL.US)$Will be atA special event called “Rapid Incursion” will be held at 8 a.m. Beijing time on Tuesday (10/31)。 According to the consensus already reached by the market, the consumer electronics giant will release M3 series chips and various Mac computer products.
Coincidentally, Qualcomm, which did not have a strong presence in the PC processor market in the past, released one full of ambition last weekSnapdragon X Elite Oryon chip, claiming this chipSingle thread performance surpasses Apple's M2 MAX, and at the same time required under the same peak performance30% lower energy consumption than M2 MAX。 In terms of peak multi-threading performance, Qualcomm also said that the 12-core X Elite Oryon is better than the 8-core M2 chip50% higher.
Qualcomm also announced that computers equipped with the X Elite Oryon chip will be launched around the middle of next year. The starting lineup includes nine major major manufacturers, including Honor, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Microsoft Surface, Samsung, HP, Dell, Acer, and Asus.
Qualcomm's chips have another layer of origin with Apple. Qualcomm only acquired Oryon chip technology through the acquisition of chip company Nuvia in 2021.Nuvia's founders include Gerard Williams III, who worked for Apple from 2010 to 2019 and was the chief chip architect, leading the development of all Apple CPUs and SOCs during this period.After leaving Apple to found Nuvia, many Apple chip designers were also stolen.
How will Apple respond?
Although Apple still has an ecological advantage that is difficult to replicate in the application field, the concept of the “strongest Arm PC chip” has been interfered with by rival Qualcomm, which is undoubtedly the biggest challenge Apple has faced since launching the M-series chip.
The performance of the Qualcomm X Elite Oryon chip meansStarting next year, there will be a number of notebook competitors on the market that can compete with Macbooks.
Mark Gurman, a well-known technology journalist, revealed in his latest breaking news article that in the face of increasingly fierce competition,Apple will release 3 new Mac chips — M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max — in one go at the press conference on Monday local time. At the same time, it will update the high-end MacBook Pro and the iMac that has been dormant for two and a half years.
Since the A17 Pro, which also used 3nm before, did not show the “huge increase” expected by the market (compared to the 4nm A16), the outside world is also closely watching the state of the M3 chip.
Gurman revealed,The M3 chip is bound to make a “relatively big leap forward” compared to the 5nm M2 series in terms of performanceAlso, due to the process process being increased to 3nm,Energy consumption and battery life will also improve。 Although the new computer is not very updated in terms of appearance, Apple will regain the power to brag about its strength in the chip field through the final press conference of the year.
In terms of specific parameters, Gurman expects:
The M3 chip has the same parameter specifications as the M2, and will have 8 CPUs (4 high-performance cores+4 efficiency cores), and up to 10 graphics processors. butThe memory configuration of the M3 chip will be improved, and the performance of each core will also be more powerful;
The M3 Pro chip has been shown in multiple tests, including a version with 12 CPUs (6 performance cores+6 efficiency cores) and 18 GPUs. It is expectedThe high-end version of the M3 Pro will have 14 CPUs and 20 GPUs;
The number of CPU cores in M3 Max will reach 16 (12 performance cores+4 efficiency cores),The number of GPU cores will reach an astonishing 40。 In another model, the number of GPU cores can also reach 32.
Considering the chip release rules and product iteration time,In the context of tight competitors, Apple is also speeding up the pace of updates。 Apple only released the MacBook Pro equipped with the M2 Pro/Max chip in January of this year, and it was only 10 months after full counting.
Gurman explained that this situation occurred because the M2 product was released several months to a year later than expected, but Apple did not delay the launch of the M3 series as a result.
Editor/Corrine