Apple’s 3nm chip may come out in 2023

Recently, The Information reported thatApplePlans to launch second- and third-generation Apple Silicon chips with stronger performance in the next few years.

Among them, the second-generation Apple Silicon chip launched in 2022 will use an improved version of the 5nm process, so compared with the current M1 series in terms of performance (or single core) and energy efficiency improvement is relatively limited, it is expected that the new generation of MacBook Air will take the lead use.

However, on some machines with higher performance release levels, such as desktop Macs, Apple may expand two Die chips based on the existing M1 Pro/M1 Max, which essentially forms a dual M1 Max design, so that Its (multi-core) performance is doubled.

Next, Apple plans to launch theTSMCThe foundry 3nm Mac chip, also known as the third-generation Apple Silicon chip, is codenamed “Ibiza”, “Lobos” and “Palma”.

It is reported that these chips will use up to four Die designs and integrate up to 40 cores. CPU.And is expected in 2023iPhoneThe A-series chips onboard will also switch to a 3nm process.

It is worth mentioning that Apple’s use of 3nm chips is naturally inseparable from the advanced technology that TSMC has mastered. According to the 3nm process characteristics announced by TSMC this summer, the biggest increase in 3nm comes from the density of logic gates, which is expected to be 1.7 times that of the 5nm node. At the same time, power consumption is improved by up to 30% compared to 5nm, and the transistor speed is also 10%. %～15% improvement.

In TSMC’s 3nm process, the increase in logic gate density is the largest, while the increase in transistor speed is small. This can also explain Apple’s multi-core design in the third-generation M-series chips: Apple plans to use more Transistor to get the wholeprocessorPerformance improvement, rather than relying on faster clock frequencies.

Because 3nm has a higher logic gate density, we expect to see more complex IP designs in the third-generation M series chips, and it is even possible to integrate some M1 and dedicated acceleration units that are not available in traditional CPUs to achieve overall performance The promotion. At the same time, the power consumption improvement brought by the 3nm process is expected to continue to help the third-generation M series processors maintain a very good energy efficiency ratio. After all, “power saving” is one of the important highlights of the M1 chip.

While using the 3nm process, another process highlight of the third-generation M-series chips is the use of multi-die integration. It is planned to use up to 4 chips integrated in one package.This approach will bring the design of the third-generation M-series chips closerAMDUse Chiplet’s Zen series architecture.

In the M1 chip, Apple did not use such a multi-chip design, but used a similarMobile phone chipSoC design. Since M1 is Apple’s first-generation self-developed Mac chip, using the A-series SoC design close to Apple’s expertise is the technology path with the least risk, and it also brings a good energy efficiency ratio.

When it comes to the third-generation M-series chips, the use of multi-chip integration will make it easier for Apple to implement the multi-core architecture required for high-performance computing. This is also expected to become the technological pillar of Apple’s further advancement of high-performance computing.