Apple M3 is a series of

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between the ...

-based

system on a chip A system on a chip or system-on-chip (SoC ; pl. ''SoCs'' ) is an integrated circuit that integrates most or all components of a computer or other electronic system. These components almost always include a central processing unit (CPU), memory ...

(SoC) designed by

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

, part of the

Apple silicon Apple silicon is a series of system on a chip (SoC) and system in a package (SiP) processors designed by Apple Inc., mainly using the ARM architecture. It is the basis of most new Mac computers as well as iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Apple TV, a ...

series, as a

central processing unit A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, an ...

(CPU) and

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...

(GPU) for its Mac desktops and

notebooks A notebook is a small book often used for writing. Notebook or The Notebook may also refer to: Computing *Laptop, a type of personal computer *Google Notebook, a discontinued online application * Notebook interface, a type of programming environ ...

. Released in late 2023, it is the third generation of ARM architecture intended for Apple's Mac computers after switching from Intel Core to Apple silicon, succeeding the

Apple M2 The Apple M2 is an ARM-based system on a chip (SoC) designed by Apple Inc. as a central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) for its Mac notebooks and the iPad Pro tablet. It is the second generation of ARM architecture in ...

Release

Apple announced the M3 on October 30, 2023, at its

Halloween Halloween or Hallowe'en (less commonly known as Allhalloween, All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve) is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Saints' Day. It begins the observanc ...

-themed ''Scary Fast'' online event, along with models of the iMac and the MacBook Pro using the M3.

Design

The M3 series is Apple's first 3 nm design for desktops and notebooks. It is manufactured by

TSMC Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC; also called Taiwan Semiconductor) is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the world's most valuable semicon ...

CPU

* M3: 8-core CPU with 4 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores * M3 Pro: 11- or 12-core CPU with 5 or 6 performance cores and 6 efficiency cores * M3 Max: 14- or 16-core CPU with 10 or 12 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores

GPU

The redesigned GPU includes features like Dynamic Caching, Mesh Shading, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The Dynamic Caching technology allocates local memory in real time. Unlike conventional approaches, Dynamic Caching ensures that only the precise amount of memory required for a task is used, thereby optimizing memory usage and potentially enhancing performance and efficiency. This is particularly beneficial for graphics-intensive tasks, where dynamic memory allocation can be critical. Supported

codec A codec is a device or computer program that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder on a signal or da ...

s on the M3 include 8K

H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC), also referred to as H.264 or MPEG-4 Part 10, is a video compression standard based on block-oriented, motion-compensated coding. It is by far the most commonly used format for the recording, compression, and distri ...

, 8K

H.265 H is the eighth letter of the Latin alphabet. H may also refer to: Musical symbols * H number, Harry Halbreich reference mechanism for music by Honegger and Martinů * H, B (musical note) * H, B major People * H. (noble) (died after 1279 ...

(8/10bit, up to 4:4:4), 8K

Apple ProRes Apple ProRes is a high quality, "visually lossless" lossy video compression format developed by Apple Inc. for use in post-production that supports video resolution up to 8K. It is the successor of the Apple Intermediate Codec and was introduced ...

VP9 VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google. VP9 is the successor to VP8 and competes mainly with MPEG's High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265). At first, VP9 was mainly used on Google's video platform YouTube. ...

JPEG JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...

and

AV1 AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015 that ...

decoding.

NPU

The M3 contains dedicated neural network hardware in a 16-core Neural Engine capable of executing over 18 trillion operations per second, which is slower than the A17 Pro's 35 TOPS NPU seen in the iPhone 15 Pro series.

AI

Apple specifically targeted AI development and workloads, both with the Neural Engine and with the increased maximum memory (128 GiB) of the M3 Max, allowing AI models with high numbers of parameters. Apple claims a 15% performance improvement for AI workloads on the M3 (compared to the previous generation M2).

Memory

The M3's

Unified Memory Architecture Unified may refer to: * The Unified, a wine symposium held in Sacramento, California, USA * ''Unified'', the official student newspaper of Canterbury Christ Church University * UNFD, an Australian record label * ''Unified'' (Sweet & Lynch album) ...

(UMA) is similar to the M2 generation; M3 SoCs use 6,400

MT/s In computer technology, transfers per second and its more common secondary terms gigatransfers per second (abbreviated as GT/s) and megatransfers per second (MT/s) are informal language that refer to the number of operations transferring data that ...

LPDDR5 SDRAM. As with prior M series SoCs, this serves as both RAM and video RAM. The M3 has 8 memory controllers, the M3 Pro has 12 and the M3 Max has 32. Each controller is 16-bits wide and is capable of accessing up to 4 GiB of memory. The M3 Pro and 14-core M3 Max have lower memory bandwidth than the M1/M2 Pro and M1/M2 Max respectively. The M3 Pro has a 192-bit memory bus where the M1 and M2 Pro had a 256-bit bus, resulting in only 150 GB/sec bandwidth versus 200 GB/sec for its predecessors. The 14-core M3 Max only enables 24 out of the 32 controllers, therefore it has 300 GB/sec vs. the 400 GB/sec for all models of the M1 and M2 Max, while the 16-core M3 Max has the same 400 GB/sec as the prior M1 and M2 Max models.

Other features

Other components include an

image signal processor An image processor, also known as an image processing engine, image processing unit (IPU), or image signal processor (ISP), is a type of media processor or specialized digital signal processor (DSP) used for image processing, in digital cameras or ...

(ISP), a

PCI Express PCI Express (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), officially abbreviated as PCIe or PCI-e, is a high-speed serial computer expansion bus standard, designed to replace the older PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards. It is the common ...

storage controller, a

Secure Enclave Secure may refer to: * Security, being protected against danger or loss(es) **Physical security, security measures that are designed to deny unauthorized access to facilities, equipment, and resources **Information security, defending information ...

, and a

USB4 USB4 (aka: USB 4.0) is a specification by the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), which was released in version 1.0 on 29 August 2019. The USB4 protocol is based on the Thunderbolt 3 protocol; the Thunderbolt 3 specification was donated to the USB- ...

controller that includes

Thunderbolt 4 Thunderbolt is the brand name of a hardware interface for the connection of external peripherals to a computer. It has been developed by Intel, in collaboration with Apple. It was initially marketed under the name Light Peak, and first sold as ...

support.

Products that use the Apple M3 series

M3

* MacBook Pro (14-inch, Nov 2023) * MacBook Air (13-inch, M3, 2024) * MacBook Air (15-inch, M3, 2024) * iMac (24-inch, 2023)

M3 Pro

* MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch, Nov 2023)

M3 Max

* MacBook Pro (14-inch and 16-inch, Nov 2023)

Variants

The table below shows the various SoCs.

References

{{Application ARM-based chips Computer-related introductions in 2023 Apple silicon