After years of record sales and supply chain shortages that kept demand high, computing vendors found themselves on the offensive. The past several financial quarters have been rough for computing manufacturers, with many tech vendors experiencing double digital declines of 20 percent or more. Despite weak sales, market leaders continue to invest in innovation as software and gaming performance demands continue to push the need for more efficient and performant architectures.
Intel has long dominated the PC chip market. Apple recently broke ranks in 2021 when it offered its M series silicon. The announcement of an Apple-specific chip architecture based on ARM fundamentally changed how consumers and enterprises viewed the Mac’s performance and put many computing vendors on the offensive. At the time, it combined CPU, GPU, and RAM into a single chip. The strategy deepened Apple’s full-stack vertical integration strategy, which controls everything from the hardware to the software to build differentiation. Apple’s original marketing focused on describing an architecture and design that enabled performance, power efficiency and security. Today, it continues improving the number of cores and performance per watt.
The company announced a series of M3 chips.
Apple says the combination of its unified memory architecture, neural engine, media engine, and new family of 3-nanometer chips allow it to provide superior performance compared to Intel silicon and its previous generation of M1 and M2 chips. The key highlights of the products include:
Advanced GPU
The most significant advancement comes to the GPU. The M3 family of chips introduces a next-generation GPU microarchitecture that enables a feature it calls dynamic caching. The traditional way that a GPU handles caching of local memory is to assigns the same amount of memory to all the processes at compile time. The GPU reserves memory that never gets used because it was allocated inefficiently. Instead of software determining a fixed amount of local GPU memory, dynamic caching allows the system to distribute memory based on what the compiler needs to complete the task at that moment. Other GPU advances include new rendering features such as hardware-accelerated mesh shading to bring greater capability and efficiency to geometry processing while enabling more visually complex scenes. Dynamic caching dramatically increases the average utilization of the GPU to increase performance for the most demanding applications and games significantly.
The new GPU architecture will also bring hardware-accelerated ray tracing to the Mac. NVIDIA has discussed hardware ray tracing for some time. For those unfamiliar with ray tracing, it is a rendering technique that produces photorealistic graphics with true-to-life lighting and shadow formations. It helps accurately simulate how light interacts with objects, including the level of light reflection, refraction, or absorption. The combination of hardware-accelerated ray tracing and the new graphics architecture allows the new MacBook Pros to deliver up to 2.5 times faster rendering performance than the M1 family. When comparing the GPU to the latest 12-core PC Laptop chip, Apple stated it provides the same performance at one-fifth of the power.
More performant and efficient CPU
The new architecture boosts tremendous performance per watt. The performance of the CPU cores is up to 30% faster than the M1 family, while its efficiency cores take an even bigger leap to be up to 50% faster. The architecture can deliver the same multi-threaded CPU performance as the M1 with half the power, and the GPU can provide the same performance at nearly half the power. According to claims from Apple, its Macs will deliver the same CPU performance using a quarter of the power of the latest 12-core PC Laptop chip. Everyone loves to beat up on Intel, but they still own a majority of the device leads and the Intel team continues to work tirelessly on closing performance gaps. It will be interesting to see what design wins and performance characteristics will be announced at CES, but Apple has definitely thrown down the gauntlet.
A 3-nanometer architecture
Apple’s latest chips pack more punch in a smaller size. It uses a 3-nanometer manufacturing process to pack billions more transistors into the same or a smaller die size than was possible with 5 and 7-nanometer processes. The M3 chip has 5 billion more transistors than the M2 chip in a smaller footprint, which allows Apple to create new capabilities and functionality, such as changes in the GPU’s performance.
A faster and more efficient neural engine
The neural engine is up to 60% faster than the M1 family, with an advanced media engine for hardware acceleration of the most popular video codecs. It now supports AVI1, enabling power-efficient playback of streaming video from services like YouTube, Netflix, and others. When Apple announced its silicon three years ago, it added neural engineering with CPU and GPU accelerators. Meanwhile, the unified memory architecture offers an advantage in AI because the transformer models people use for AI require tremendous memory. The unified memory model lets you use transformer models with billions of parameters on your MacBook Pro.
Scary fast meets the MacBook Pro and iMac platforms
As widely rumored, we saw the refreshes of the MacBook Pro models with 14-inch or 16-inch screens and a series of M3 chips. Each Apple M series chip supports different user needs for the various MacBook Pro models. For example, the M3 offers an 8-core CPU, next-generation 10-core GPU, and up to 65% faster performance. The M3 Pro scales up that design, offering a 12-core CPU and 18-core GPU, and it’s up to 40% faster than the M1 Pro. Meanwhile, the M3 Max provides a 16-core CPU, a 40-core GPU, and 128 gigabytes of unified memory for the most demanding workloads. An M3 Max machine would allow AI developers to work with even larger transformer models with billions of parameters.
All the MacBooks provide up to 22 hours of battery life. Apple claims the new MacBook Pros are up to 11 times faster than the fastest Intel-based models. With the new chips, the Macs will be highly responsive and power efficient, eliminating fan noise for most workflows. For those that are more interested in the media aspects of the products, Apple’s MacBook’s come with a1080P FaceTime camera, a six-speaker sound system, a magic keyboard, and a liquid retina XDR display with 1000 nits and 1600 nits peak brightness for HDR content. SDR content will now be displayed up to 600 nits, which is 20% brighter than before.
Apple introduced a new color called Space Black, which offers a dark aluminum finish that uses an anodization seal to significantly reduce fingerprints’ appearance. From a sustainability perspective, all MacBook Pro enclosures use a custom alloy made of 100% recycled aluminum, which is incredibly durable. Features such as dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and the hardware accelerated ray tracing are available across the whole family of MacBooks.
From a product perspective, Apple announced:
- The 14-inch MacBook Pro, sporting the M3 chip, has an advanced thermal system that allows you to sustain up to 60% faster performance than the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1. The improved performance makes it appropriate for demanding content of workflows, such as making intricate 3D models or viewing and interacting with large medical images and surgical AR stunning detail on the XDR display. Hardware-accelerated ray tracing offers gameplay with incredibly realistic lighting and shadows. For example, render performance in Final Cut Pro is up to 7.4 times faster than the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Core i7, and up to 60 percent faster than the 13-inch MacBook Pro with M1.
- The 14 and 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M3 Pro chip offers performance up to 40% faster than the 16-inch model with M1. It adds more unified memory for users with demanding workflows, such as coders, creative professionals, and researchers. Apple says it is suitable for manipulating enormous panoramic photos in applications such as Photoshop and working on large and complex data models such as MATLAB. These MacBooks offer developers more fluid compiling and testing millions for lines of code.
- The MacBook Pro with M3 Max targets users with the most complex workflows, like AI developers, 3D artists, and video professionals. Its performance is 2.5 times faster than the 16-inch MacBook Pro with M1 Max. The GPU architecture makes the laptop suitable for modeling and iterating complex 3D content and video post-production work on high resolution content and apps like DaVinci Resolve Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. The MacBook Pro with M3 Max supports up to 128 gigabytes of unified memory, which enables creators to easily work on large and complex projects spanning multiple pro apps and plugins such as Substance 3D.
- For the more consumer-oriented audience, the 24-inch iMac also received a refresh. It launched with the M1 chip in 2021. The iMac will skip the M2 entirely and jump straight to the new M3 chip, offering a significant performance boost.
One notable change was the pricing of the base 14-inch MacBook Pro model, which started at $1,999. The new M3 model now starts at $1599. The 16-inch MacBook Pro M3 Pro and Max will still start at $2,499.
How much speed and performance do you need?
Many are probably wondering if the specifications are overkill. It depends. If you’re a gamer, you’re constantly looking for computers that increases that increase the realism and performance of games. On the enterprise side, more companies want machines designed to run AI models and performance-intensive AI-enabled software. If you’re an average consumer, you may not need the performance of the M3 series. However, one thing is for certain for any buyer. The latest applications, games, and media have a near-insatiable demand for high-performing architecture, which means a person can purchase of one of these machines without fear that the hardware will be useless in the next two years. The 24-inch iMac also provides a significant performance upgrade for individuals interested in an all-in-one. The iMac update with the M3 series allows Apple to capitalize on the holiday season for consumer purchases. The pro line is also announced within a window that supports 2024 budget planning for corporate buyers.
Apple has always attempted to corner the high end of the market. These announcements are no exception. It’s the same reason you saw Dell and NVIDIA offer new hardware designed with AI inferencing workloads. The Apple tagline said “Scary Fast”, which Apple delivered. If you’re a consumer running on older versions of Intel-based Macs, older Windows PCs or a creator looking for the latest tech, these products offer a significant upgrade
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