News Apple's Base M3 SoC Reportedly Won't Increase CPU or GPU Core Count

[Admin]

A new Apple M3 SoC leak indicates the base chip will come with 4P + 4E cores, 10 GPU cores, and 24 GB RAM – debuting in a Mac Mini refresh.

Apple's Base M3 SoC Reportedly Won't Increase CPU or GPU Core Count : Read more

 

[bit_user]

Both M1 and M2 used the same process node (TSMC N5), which has gotten cheaper since the M1 shipped. TSMC's N3 node will be more expensive, so it's understandable they want to keep costs down on the base configuration.

 

[thestryker]

While I'm not a fan of apple in any way I hope this isn't a sign of the entire line. It would be a shame for them to not be moving the architecture forward in any meaningful way.

 

[bit_user]

While I'm not a fan of apple in any way I hope this isn't a sign of the entire line. It would be a shame for them to not be moving the architecture forward in any meaningful way.

Maybe it's Apple's version of tick tock? The M1 and M2 had roughly the same microarchitecture and process node, but generally more cores and faster clocks. If they improve the architecture and shrink the process node, in this generation, it won't matter if core counts are somewhat stagnant.

ARM's newly-announced X4 has 10-way dispatch, which is even wider than Apple's current P-cores:

Arm Introduces The Cortex-X4, Its Newest Flagship Performance Core

Arm Introduces Its Newest Flagship Performance Core, The Cortex-X4

fuse.wikichip.org

The X4 still has a smaller reorder buffer than Apple's, but it's going big on caches and that's another one of Apple's traditional advantages.