Apple has reserved nearly 90% of first-generation 3-nanometer chip provider TSMC’s processing capacity this year for future iPhones, Macs and iPads, according to industry sources cited by it. DigiTimeswhich provided the Taiwanese foundry with significant growth momentum in the second half of 2023.
Upcoming Apple iPhone 15 Pro models are expected to feature the A17 Bionic processor, which is Apple’s first iPhone chip based on TSMC’s first generation 3nm process, also known as N3B. 3nm technology is said to offer a 35% improvement in power efficiency and 15% faster performance compared to 4nm, which was used to make the A16 Bionic chip for the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max.
The Apple M3 chip for Mac and iPad is also expected to use the 3nm process. The first M3 devices are expected to include an updated 13-inch MacBook Air and a 24-inch iMac, both of which may arrive later this year. New iPad Pro models released next year are likely to be powered by M3 chips, while Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that new 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro models coming in 2024 will have M3 Pro and M3 Max chips.
According to the App Store developer history obtained it bloombergMark Gurman, Apple is currently testing a new chip with a 12-core CPU, 18-core GPU, and 36GB of memory, which could be the base level M3 Pro for the next-generation 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models that will be launched next year.
according to the informationFuture silicon chips built on the 3nm process will contain up to four dies, which will support up to 40 compute cores. M2 chip has 10 cores CPU, while M2 Pro and Max both have 12 cores CPU, so 3nm can greatly boost multi-core performance. At the very least, 3nm should provide the biggest leap in performance and efficiency for Apple chips since 2020.
TSMC is also working on an improved 3nm process called N3E. Apple devices will eventually move to the N3E generation, which is expected to enter commercial production in the second half of 2023, but actual shipments won’t increase until 2024, according to Apple. DigiTimes.