New Macs Featuring the 3nm M2 Pro and M2 Max Expected to Arrive in the First Half of Next Year
The report published by Commercial Times claims that the M2 Pro and M2 Max may be the first to use TSMC’s advanced 3nm process. In case you did not read about it before, we reported earlier that both Apple Silicon would be mass produced later this year, though details on which month operations would commence were not disclosed. Sadly, the A16 Bionic will not be made on this architecture for many reasons. First and foremost, Apple likely gave A16 Bionic orders to TSMC to be made on its 4nm architecture months before the Taiwanese manufacturer announced its 3nm process. Secondly, even if Apple wanted to secure A16 Bionic shipments on the 3nm process, the nature of manufacturing large wafers on such lithography meant that the firm would likely run into yield issues, resulting in fewer shipments delivered to Apple. This would result in more delays for the premium iPhone 14 models. Given that Apple has reportedly informed suppliers to prepare components for 95 million iPhone 14 units for this year, it will need a consistent supply for a few months. Also, new Macs sporting the M2 Pro and M2 Max are not expected until next year, so while we would have loved to see fresh hardware in 2022, there is a long list of factors that prevent companies from delivering products according to our expected schedule. When talking about specifications, the M2 Max is expected to arrive with a 12-core CPU and 38-core GPU variant, but it will likely be reserved for the top-tier configuration, requiring customers to pay extra to get those extra cores. We do not have specification details for the M2 Pro, other than the fact that both SoCs will retain the maximum allotted unified RAM limits as the M1 Pro and M1 Max, which is 64GB. The difference here is that we could see Apple adopt the newer LPDDR5 memory standard as it did with the M2. TSMC’s 3nm process will likely be used to manufacture the A17 Bionic, but the latter will exclusively be shipped in the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. As for the regular iPhone 15 models, they will likely be treated to the A16 Bionic. If you want to learn more about the M2 Pro and M2 Max, make sure to go through our detailed rumor roundup while also sharing your thoughts in the comments. News Source: Commercial Times
