Over the weekend, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman dug into the specs of a Mac Mini in testing with the new generation of Apple Silicon, and today, he’s reporting that in the high-end 16-inch MacBook Pro, at least one version of the M3 Max chip seen in testing contains 16 CPU cores and 40 GPU cores as well as up to 48GB of memory.
Extensive rumors about Apple’s hardware refresh cycle are a sign summer is ending and we’re moving into the fall, and now that Apple has delivered on its promise of a new Mac Pro — even if it’s less exciting than many had hoped for — the M3 refresh cycle appears ready to get started. New MacBooks (Pro and Air), as well as Mac Mini and iMac desktops, are set to launch over the next year starting in October, and Gurman notes the update 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro are “likely” to launch in 2024.
As noted by Bloomberg, the top-of-the-line iPhone 15 Pro models released later this year will also contain a new A17 processor, which will have a lot in common with the M3 chips, all built on a new 3nm process that’s tough for the competition to match right now.
More specifically, according to the report, test logs he’s seen from a third-party app developer point to a split in the CPU cores with 12 high-performance (four more than the current M2 Max in laptops) and four efficiency cores (the same number as the M2 Max), which could increase processing power for stuff like video editing or extreme Excel sports while maintaining similar battery life to previous models.