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I think you may be reading too much into what is likely coincidence. I assume you are referring to patent applications, not patents - there is no way to control when patents actually issue (i mean, you can delay issuance if you are willing to play games and risk issuance, but you can’t speed it up), but you can control when you file an application.Usually there is a flurry of new patents before new SoC release. Nothing like that happened on the last few months.
There were a bunch of new NPU-related patents last year, so again, I can imagine that the iPad gets some sort of M3 AI edition, but nothing beyond that.
But patent applications aren’t generally published until 18 months after they are filed (and in some cases aren’t published until they issue as patents). Until they are published, patent applications cannot be seen by the public. So if you see a flurry of patent applications in the months before an SoC becomes available, that generally means those patents were filed a year and a half earlier.
I don’t believe Apple is on an 18-month SoC design cycle at this point - I think it‘s closer to 12 months - so it’s unlikely that patent applications becoming available to the public today correspond to work that was done on SoC’s becoming available to the public today.
1120-Eighteen-Month Publication of Patent Applications
www.uspto.gov