TSMC Expected to Begin 3nm Chip Production in Late 2022 Ahead of First M3 Macs

Dear CEO of INTEL. To go from 4 to 6 cores of your XEON I paid $1000 INTEL-tax (OK, plus upgrade from D300 to D500 GPU). Yet, it is beaten handily my an iPhone chip consuming 20W. Don't put big words in your mouth how you want to "do business with Apple" - you had more than 10 years to produce a reasonable fast CPU; and all you have are lame excuses for a product which still costs top $$$. Go to the corner, think about how your failed miserably, and shut the f*ck up.

Wow... Kinda embarrased that I own an M1 based Mac. Nearly obsolete!

Cue BMW suing Apple: “too fast, can create brand confusion”.

TSMC stated on its official website that the 3nm process is a complete process node span after 5nm. For the 3nm process foundry chips, the theoretical density of transistors will increase by 70% relative to 5nm. Furthermore, the operating speed will increase by 15%, and the energy efficiency will increase by 30%.

It’s going to be interesting to see if the Mac consumer upgrade cycle decreases as a result of the Apple Silicon change.

Back in the nineties and early 2000’s, it seemed uncommon for a laptop to be useful for more than about two years. The rate of change was such that anything became unusable within that period, and often didn't even have the necessary specs to run new software.

That hasn't been the case for close to a decade now. Average computers still run great between 8 (really!) and 16gb RAM, maybe 32 for power users. My last computer, a 2016 MBP, was great for five years; my brother-in-law just informed me that he was finally replacing his 2013 MBP with an M1(!!).

I don't expect software needs to catch up with Apple Silicon speed any time soon (if ever), but one of the fascinating and under-reported things about M1 processors is that they don't just run faster than Intel chips, they do different things. There is no Intel "Neural Engine," for example. Afterburner cards haven't exactly taken off, but it's an interesting concept that has only just been tried.

While I can pretty much promise that I won't be replacing this M1Pro with an M2Pro next year, I can't say the same for the M3Pro. It might not just be faster — it could also be new in a way that wasn't possible in the Intel era.

Great news. Ahead of the schedule.

👏☝️🙌