Discussion Apple Silicon SoC thread

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Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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M1
5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LP-DDR4
16 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 12 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache
(Apple claims the 4 high-effiency cores alone perform like a dual-core Intel MacBook Air)

8-core iGPU (but there is a 7-core variant, likely with one inactive core)
128 execution units
Up to 24576 concurrent threads
2.6 Teraflops
82 Gigatexels/s
41 gigapixels/s

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Products:
$999 ($899 edu) 13" MacBook Air (fanless) - 18 hour video playback battery life
$699 Mac mini (with fan)
$1299 ($1199 edu) 13" MacBook Pro (with fan) - 20 hour video playback battery life

Memory options 8 GB and 16 GB. No 32 GB option (unless you go Intel).

It should be noted that the M1 chip in these three Macs is the same (aside from GPU core number). Basically, Apple is taking the same approach which these chips as they do the iPhones and iPads. Just one SKU (excluding the X variants), which is the same across all iDevices (aside from maybe slight clock speed differences occasionally).

EDIT:

Screen-Shot-2021-10-18-at-1.20.47-PM.jpg

M1 Pro 8-core CPU (6+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 14-core GPU
M1 Pro 10-core CPU (8+2), 16-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 24-core GPU
M1 Max 10-core CPU (8+2), 32-core GPU

M1 Pro and M1 Max discussion here:


M1 Ultra discussion here:


M2 discussion here:


Second Generation 5 nm
Unified memory architecture - LPDDR5, up to 24 GB and 100 GB/s
20 billion transistors

8-core CPU

4 high-performance cores
192 KB instruction cache
128 KB data cache
Shared 16 MB L2 cache

4 high-efficiency cores
128 KB instruction cache
64 KB data cache
Shared 4 MB L2 cache

10-core iGPU (but there is an 8-core variant)
3.6 Teraflops

16-core neural engine
Secure Enclave
USB 4

Hardware acceleration for 8K h.264, h.264, ProRes

M3 Family discussion here:


M4 Family discussion here:

 
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Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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You never admit clearly that you made a wrong conclusion, right?

Even if M4 comes out in Fall 2024, that still disproves you.
You haven't been paying attention. As I've said previously, when Intel had yearly CPU releases, sometimes Apple would adopt those chips yearly, and sometimes they wouldn't, the point being Apple wasn't wedded to a yearly Mac release schedule, even when the chips were available to adopt as drop-in upgrades. It was clear Apple didn't feel the need to lock themselves into that cadence for Macs, even if they do for iPhones. However, iPhones sell at literally an order of magnitude higher than Macs do, so it makes sense.

Anyhow, at this point, we don't know if M4 will come out spring 2024 (which would be a bonus because I'm interested in buying an OLED iPad Pro this year), fall 2024, or early 2025. There have been rumours for all three dates now. Ironically, those rumours have all been stated by Mark Gurman, so he's all over the map.
 
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Glo.

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Apr 25, 2015
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I said yearly is not necessary since they're Macs and not iPhones, and I still don't believe it will be consistently yearly (although yes it could be after a year occasionally). Personally I don't see why some people are so adamant it has to be yearly. There is no such requirement because the Mac market doesn't demand it. Even in the days of Intel's yearly releases, Apple didn't adopt those chips yearly.

However, I will admit I wouldn't have expected 9 months. Then again, there were theories (that most did not believe) that M3 could move from N3B to N3E to prolong that generation, but I guess moving to M4 on N3B might make more sense.
For Normal MX chips it can be yearly cadence. For MX Pro, Max, Ultra - it will be extremely difficult to maintain that pace of new revisions.
 
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Eug

Lifer
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I wonder how much cheaper it will be to manufacture M4 on N3E than would be to manufacture M3 on N3B in 2024.

M1: 16 billion transistors, 119 mm2, N5
M1 Max: 57 billon transistors, 425 mm2, N5
M2: 20 billion transistors, 142 mm2, N5P
M2 Max: 67 billon transistors, ? 510 mm2, N5P
M3: 25 billion transistors, 146 mm2, N3B
M3 Max: 92 billon transistors, ? >600 mm2, N3B

M4: ?? billion transistors, ??? mm2, ? N3E
M4 Max? ??? billion transistors, ??? mm2, ? N3E

P.S. Just a reminder that N3E is supposedly a bit less dense than N3B.


Screenshot 2024-04-28 at 3.51.56 PM.png
 

Doug S

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Feb 8, 2020
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I wonder how much cheaper it will be to manufacture M4 on N3E than would be to manufacture M3 on N3B in 2024.

M1: 16 billion transistors, 119 mm2, N5
M1 Max: 57 billon transistors, 425 mm2, N5
M2: 20 billion transistors, 142 mm2, N5P
M2 Max: 67 billon transistors, ? 510 mm2, N5P
M3: 25 billion transistors, 146 mm2, N3B
M3 Max: 92 billon transistors, ? >600 mm2, N3B

M4: ?? billion transistors, ??? mm2, ? N3E
M4 Max? ??? billion transistors, ??? mm2, ? N3E

P.S. Just a reminder that N3E is supposedly a bit less dense than N3B.


You can tell from that table alone that Apple is not going to be concerned about minor variations in price. They went from 119 to 142 mm^2 between M1 and M2, despite N5P being a bit denser. That clearly increased their cost, but M2 would still be less than $50 per chip (not including the fancy packaging with LPDDR) so it is well under 10% of the price of even the cheapest products it goes in, and under 5% of the price of the most expensive like iPad Pro.

Compare with the economics of PC OEMs, who are paying much higher prices for Intel & AMD chips. Granted they don't pay the development/design costs like Apple does, but Apple has much more flexibility on that front than anyone else selling PCs/tablets.

If they do M4 early (I'm skeptical but as I posted elsewhere it is theoretically possible) it won't be to save money. It'll be because they have reasons (presumably the larger NPU but who knows what else) to get M4 into iPad Pros now rather than a year from now.
 

mikegg

Golden Member
Jan 30, 2010
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You haven't been paying attention. As I've said previously, when Intel had yearly CPU releases, sometimes Apple would adopt those chips yearly, and sometimes they wouldn't, the point being Apple wasn't wedded to a yearly Mac release schedule, even when the chips were available to adopt as drop-in upgrades
I have been paying attention. You were pretty adamant that Apple wouldn't do a yearly cadence and you gave the reason why.

This doesn’t sound right. I’d be very surprised if M series is yearly.
What's wrong with ~18 months? That was roughly the time frame for the iPad Pros, which used pre-M type chips.

The average between releases is over 500 days, and the very shortest is over 400 days.

2015-11 - A9X
2017-06 - A10X
2018-10 - A12X
2020-03 - A12Z
2021-04 - M1
2022-10 - M2
 

mikegg

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Jan 30, 2010
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You can tell from that table alone that Apple is not going to be concerned about minor variations in price. They went from 119 to 142 mm^2 between M1 and M2, despite N5P being a bit denser. That clearly increased their cost, but M2 would still be less than $50 per chip (not including the fancy packaging with LPDDR) so it is well under 10% of the price of even the cheapest products it goes in, and under 5% of the price of the most expensive like iPad Pro.

Compare with the economics of PC OEMs, who are paying much higher prices for Intel & AMD chips. Granted they don't pay the development/design costs like Apple does, but Apple has much more flexibility on that front than anyone else selling PCs/tablets.

If they do M4 early (I'm skeptical but as I posted elsewhere it is theoretically possible) it won't be to save money. It'll be because they have reasons (presumably the larger NPU but who knows what else) to get M4 into iPad Pros now rather than a year from now.
That's right. Trendforce did an analysis in the past and came up with something like $200 - $300 for Intel chips "equivalent" to the M1. That means Apple saves around $150 - $200 per Macbook Air in BOM.

Coincidentally, this was the main reason why I suggested (back in the year 2021) that Apple will likely introduce a Macbook SE that costs around $750 - $799 in the future. Once again, @Eug disagreed and thought Apple would never sell a Macbook that cheap. Although the Macbook SE hasn't been released yet, it's only been rumored, the M1 Macbook Air has been selling for $650 - $750 for over a year now at Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, etc. The M1 Air is really the Macbook SE in spirit.

I still expect to see a real Macbook SE in the future though I'm raising the expected MSRP price to now $799 - $850 due to rapid inflation. What do you think @Eug ?

You're sounding more and more ridiculous.

1) $900 is not $700.
2) Apple computers go on sale EVERY FRICKIN' YEAR on Black Friday/Cyber Monday. This is not new.
3) The list price is still $1000. $1000 is 43% more than $700.

Come back when you actually have something real to argue with.


Whatever you're smokin', I want some!
Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart have been selling the M1 Air for $650 - $750 for over a year now. You keep saying my predictions are ridiculous but you keep getting proved wrong over and over again.
 
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Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart have been selling the M1 Air for $650 - $750 for over a year now. You keep saying my predictions are ridiculous but you keep getting proved wrong over and over again.
Stop trying to change the goalposts. I'll quote my own post, one you in fact quoted yourself:

Eug said:
2) Apple computers go on sale EVERY FRICKIN' YEAR on Black Friday/Cyber Monday. This is not new.

3) The list price is still $1000. $1000 is 43% more than $700.

BTW, The M1 MacBook Air has been discontinued. The current "low priced" model is the M2 MacBook Air, and the list price is still $999.

There still remains no such thing as a MacBook SE.
 
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Eug

Lifer
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I have been paying attention. You were pretty adamant that Apple wouldn't do a yearly cadence and you gave the reason why.
Thanks for finding that quote of mine. To quote myself in that very post of mine you linked::

Eug said:
What's wrong with ~18 months? That was roughly the time frame for the iPad Pros, which used pre-M type chips.

The average between releases is over 500 days, and the very shortest is over 400 days.
400 days is just over 13 months
500 days is around 17 months

The point is like Macs, Apple wasn't locking itself into a yearly cadence with the iPad Pros. They are willing to extend past a year between releases, and sometimes much longer than a year. I would expect a somewhat similar release schedule going forward, both for the iPad Pro and for Macs. There is no need for them to stick to 12 months, even if sometimes it is close to 12 months.
 
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mikegg

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Jan 30, 2010
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Stop trying to change the goalposts. I'll quote my own post, one you in fact quoted yourself:



BTW, The M1 MacBook Air has been discontinued. The current "low priced" model is the M2 MacBook Air, and the list price is still $999.

There still remains no such thing as a MacBook SE.
Not so great reading comprehension...

Anyways.

Thanks for finding that quote of mine. To quote myself in that very post of mine you linked::


400 days is just over 13 months
500 days is around 17 months

The point is like Macs, Apple wasn't locking itself into a yearly cadence with the iPad Pros. They are willing to extend past a year between releases, and sometimes much longer than a year. I would expect a somewhat similar release schedule going forward, both for the iPad Pro and for Macs. There is no need for them to stick to 12 months, even if sometimes it is close to 12 months.
Stop changing the goal post. Clearly you were vehemently rejecting the idea that Apple Silicon could come out once a year.

Yes, no one is buying $500-$700 PC laptops to do professional work anyway. People who buy them are students and people who use it for casual work.

A $700 Macbook with a one-generation behind ARM chip is going to dominate this market. It will still be the best laptop in that range.

I can totally see Apple making this laptop as soon as next year. Or they just drop the price of M1 Air to $700 and keep M2 Air $999.
Not going to happen.

Look at you here again. Confidently saying "not going to happen". That's exactly what happened for almost 1.5 year.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
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It's so strange that you love quoting things that contradict yourself.
mikegg said:
I can totally see Apple making this laptop as soon as next year. Or they just drop the price of M1 Air to $700 and keep M2 Air $999.
Just to be clear for those who may have not seen the older posts where this was ALREADY stated:

Apple never dropped its M1 Air price to $700. However, also as mentioned before, Apple laptops have frequently gone on sale at third party retail stores, particularly as they age. This has been going on for many, many years. This is not new. The only thing at Apple that comes close is refurb pricing, institutional edu pricing, and Back-To-School edu promotions (in the form of gift cards or whatever). But those are not new either.

IOW, nothing has changed. However, you continue to quote Amazon sale pricing as Apple pricing. Really, it's quite bizarre.
 
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mikegg

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It's so strange that you love quoting things that contradict yourself.

Just to be clear for those who may have not seen the older posts where this was ALREADY stated:

Apple never dropped its M1 Air price to $700. However, also as mentioned before, Apple laptops have frequently gone on sale at third party retail stores, particularly as they age. This has been going on for many, many years. This is not new. The only thing at Apple that comes close is refurb pricing, institutional edu pricing, and Back-To-School edu promotions (in the form of gift cards or whatever). But those are not new either.

IOW, nothing has changed. However, you continue to quote Amazon sale pricing as Apple pricing. Really, it's quite bizarre.
Why do you think Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Costco sold the Macbook Air M1 for $650 - $750 for 1.5 years?

They receive pricing from Apple.

Yes, it's not the price on Apple.com or Apple Store. It doesn't take a genius to know that.

Just admit it. In the beginning, you were adamament that sub $1,000 Macbooks would never come to fruition and that Apple does not have a 1 year cadence, but rather an 18 month+ cadence.

Both clearly wrong. Overtime, your tone changed and became more accepting of both of my ideas from 2020. The only person moving the goal post here seems to be you.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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Stop changing the goal post. Clearly you were vehemently rejecting the idea that Apple Silicon could come out once a year.

Either it's your own reading comprehension that needs work or you don't know what the word vehemently means. His posts read like polite disagreement with his own stated alternative belief rather than any kind of impassioned stand on a point that he refuses to budge from.

Meanwhile, All of your recent posts on this page make you come across as an unhinged weirdo trying to jump down someone's throat because they didn't agree with you on the Internet. You need to go outside and smoke some grass because I'm not sure if just touching it would be enough to take the edge off.
 

mikegg

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Jan 30, 2010
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Either it's your own reading comprehension that needs work or you don't know what the word vehemently means. His posts read like polite disagreement with his own stated alternative belief rather than any kind of impassioned stand on a point that he refuses to budge from.
Nah, @Eug definitely move the goal post. His posts started out as impassioned stands for which he refuses to budge from. He refuses to budge even after 4 years of strong evidence though his tone has definitely soften and more accepting of the original ideas.

Meanwhile, All of your recent posts on this page make you come across as an unhinged weirdo trying to jump down someone's throat because they didn't agree with you on the Internet. You need to go outside and smoke some grass because I'm not sure if just touching it would be enough to take the edge off.
Sure, if I'm wrong, I'll admit it. If @Eug is wrong, I expect him to admit it as well instead of moving the goal post. If he moves the goal post, then I'm willing to continue to respond.
 

mikegg

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Jan 30, 2010
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His posts read like polite disagreement
I don't understand why you believe this. Just see some of his impolite replies to me in the past. Do these sound like "polite disagreement"?

If you think that, then I definitely want "whatever you're smokin" as @Eug said.

You're sounding more and more ridiculous.

Come back when you actually have something real to argue with.

Whatever you're smokin', I want some!

Stop trying to change the goalposts.
 

Mopetar

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
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I don't understand why you believe this. Just see some of his impolite replies to me in the past. Do these sound like "polite disagreement"?

If you think that, then I definitely want "whatever you're smokin" as @Eug said.

The phrase "whatever you're smoking" is a colloquialism to indicate that a person finds a claim so wild or absurd as to believe you must be under the influence of drugs to make it. It's hardly unfriendly in and of itself and they're are considerably more rude ways of conveying that sentiment.

But the post you linked is over three and a half years old. What kind of grudge are you carrying that you would even dredge something like that up to try to prove a point in the first place?

Also, in reading that post and what was being replied to, it doesn't really make you look any better. We're about 18 months away from being able to actually evaluate your hypothetical (or whatever you would care to call it) of Apple hitting 50% PC market share. I don't think that's going to happen. They've only been above 20% in the US in a single quarter based on data from a quick Google search.

So I think it's quite fair for the other poster to have used that particular phrasing. Your prediction was wildly speculative and if you had bet money on it you would have lost. Even if that weren't the case, your own post was no less inflammatory in terms of language used, so I would not consider you to be some innocent victim receiving misdirected derision. I don't care to read back through three year old posts to see who started it, but it's my opinion that any curt replies you received were deserved.
 

okoroezenwa

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Dec 22, 2020
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9to5’s compilation of evidence for M4 on the iPad Pro makes sense and kind of has me convinced.


If this does happen, maybe the speculation of [mention]Doug S [/mention] that the M4 Ultra shows up end of this year happens too!
 
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Eug

Lifer
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9to5’s compilation of evidence for M4 on the iPad Pro makes sense and kind of has me convinced.


If this does happen, maybe the speculation of [mention]Doug S [/mention] that the M4 Ultra shows up end of this year happens too!
None of that is evidence. As much as I’d like to have an M4 in my potential 2024 iPad Pro (basically just for bragging rights since I don’t need the performance), everything in that report (besides the statement that new iPad Pro models are coming) is just speculation, on top of Mark Gurman’s speculation. We shall see soon, but AFAIK there have been no actual M4 leaks. The main leak that seems to have multiple sources is that the next iPad Pro will have dual-stack OLED.
 
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Doug S

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None of that is evidence. As much as I’d like to have an M4 in my potential 2024 iPad Pro (basically just for bragging rights since I don’t need the performance), everything in that report (besides the statement that new iPad Pro models are coming) is just speculation, on top of Mark Gurman’s speculation. We shall see soon, but AFAIK there have been no actual M4 leaks. The main leak that seems to have multiple sources is that the next iPad Pro will have dual-stack OLED.

Nah I was skeptical but now I'm not, that is EXACTLY the kind of evidence I was looking for to believe that the new iPads will have M4. If they have M4 in iPad Pro now I don't think we will be waiting until the next iPhone launch to see M4 Macs either.
 

okoroezenwa

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Dec 22, 2020
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Nah I was skeptical but now I'm not, that is EXACTLY the kind of evidence I was looking for to believe that the new iPads will have M4. If they have M4 in iPad Pro now I don't think we will be waiting until the next iPhone launch to see M4 Macs either.
Exactly. Identifiers have long been used to determine what Apple will be releasing (to different degrees of course) and the logic in the 9to5 post makes sense so I don't see why it wouldn't count as evidence. I could see something like:

M4 - May 2024
M4 Pro/Max - October 2024
M4 Ultra - announced 2024?

Would certainly be nice to get a Mac Studio upgrade for the Max version at least. With only 1 data point it seems like they'd rather wait for the Max and Ultra to be ready before updating it so maybe announcing would count with the Max variant available immediately and the Ultra coming later. Or they could just leave it till next year anyway.
 
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Glo.

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Nah I was skeptical but now I'm not, that is EXACTLY the kind of evidence I was looking for to believe that the new iPads will have M4. If they have M4 in iPad Pro now I don't think we will be waiting until the next iPhone launch to see M4 Macs either.
Yep. Identifiers are very good source of information about what chip will be inside.

Also - the rumors of M4 being released much earlier explains why there is no UltraFusion in M3 Max. M3 series were effectively stop-gap solution before M4 series.
 

smalM

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Sep 9, 2019
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M3 series were effectively stop-gap solution before M4 series.
I only agree on the M3 Max as base for a M3 Ultra.
M3 maybe a short-lived generation but that could be based solely on the short-lived N3 node.
From the standpoint of functional units that form the SoC the M3 generation is not a stop-gap at all.
Also we saw the strategic shift of the Pro to become a separate solution instead of a choped Max.
 

repoman27

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Dec 17, 2018
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I highly doubt Apple will call whatever is in the new iPad Pros "M4", but if they do, it would be kinda stupid because it is just another Everest / Sawtooth SoC on TSMC N3. N3E didn't enter volume production until Q4'23, so products shipping before June is highly unlikely, and I doubt Apple is planning a paper launch here. Furthermore, the supposed SoC ID for the new iPad Pro chips is T8132, while the identifier for the A17 Pro is T8130, indicating that these chips are closely related. There is a small possibility that Apple has moved mountains and that the T8132 is the M3 ported to TSMC N3E and will be able to launch in May.

Apple has never introduced a new µarch in anything other than an A-series chip, and it would be odd for them to do so now on N3. The only thing that lends credence to this is that Apple hasn't introduced a new µarch since September 2022, so they are overdue, and maybe they had one more cued up for OG N3? It's a little odd that the A16 was T8120 and the M3 was T8122, despite the fact that the M3 pulled in the updated GPU cores from the A17 Pro. Then again, the M3 Max goes by both T6031 and T6034 depending on the number of memory channels enabled, despite being the same die in different packages, so this may also represent nothing more than a packaging change.