Today's Apple event

[Jimmyjames]

Is It possible M3 will have similar single thread performance to A17? A17 cores are apparently already using M1/M2 core power (around 5W).
I thought my estimate of 3300 points GB6 was low, but 15% over M2 wouldn’t get there

I don’t think 15% over the M2 gets to 3000. So yes, it’ll probably score around the A17.

 

[Andropov]

The GPU seems to be able to use much more power than the M1. I wonder if that could’ve lead them to clock the CPU cores more conservatively so the whole SoC package power doesn’t increase as much.

 

[Aaronage]

I don’t think 15% over the M2 gets to 3000. So yes, it’ll probably score around the A17.

That’s… fine I guess.
I would rather that than Apple chase performance at the expense of increasing core power consumption.
But… ooof if true.

 

[Andropov]

I don’t think 15% over the M2 gets to 3000. So yes, it’ll probably score around the A17.

Not sure about the M3 but for the M3 Pro/Max it should be ~3200 Geekbench 6 points.

 

[dada_dave]

Not sure about the M3 but for the M3 Pro/Max it should be ~3200 Geekbench 6 points.

Yeah that’s what I calculated too

 

[Jimmyjames]

Not sure about the M3 but for the M3 Pro/Max it should be ~3200 Geekbench 6 points.

Probably. A little strange.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I’m not enamoured by this “compared to the last Intel MacBook Pro”, or even “compared to the M1 MacBook Pro”.

 

[Yoused]

I really do not think that is correct, the M1/M2 Pro were always their own die, not cut-down M1/M2 Max dies; and that would be a horrendous waste of wafer space...?

Here are M1 dies

You can clearly see that Max looks exactly like Pro but with doubled GPU cores. As Andropov says, not literally "cut off", but using the same layout (less engineering work). M2 used the same technique.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I’m curious how they skip a generation and get only 15%.

 

[Andropov]

Oh the M3 Pro is 6P+6E cores instead of 8P+4E. It’s kinda closer to the M3 than the M3 Max. Also in transistor count: 25, 37 and 92B transistors.

 

[leman]

I really do not think that is correct, the M1/M2 Pro were always their own die, not cut-down M1/M2 Max dies; and that would be a horrendous waste of wafer space...?

They were cut down dies, just not physically. They had one chip layout (Max) and only manufactured one part of it (Pro). Now they have two layouts, with three physical dies. Interesting.

 

[leman]

Is It possible M3 will have similar single thread performance to A17? A17 cores are apparently already using M1/M2 core power (around 5W).
I thought my estimate of 3300 points GB6 was low, but 15% over M2 wouldn’t get there

Almost seems like it, right?

 

[Andropov]

The E cores got so many great upgrades over the years that now they must be quite a big portion of the multi core performance. Really interesting that the M3 Pro is 6+6. I wonder if a 3-tier CPU is in the near future.

 

[Aaronage]

I can’t help feeling like this falls short on the CPU front.
Are they facing some challenges? I mean, aside from slowing core performance increases, it’s odd that they still haven’t gotten to armv9 and SVE yet.

 

[exoticspice1]

Why is the NPU not 35 TOPS?

Its like the CPU/NPU is from A16 and the GPU from A17

 

[Jimmyjames]

Just looking at the iPhone page, they claim 10% improvement, and that was pretty good in reality, so maybe 15% will be ok?

 

[Jimmyjames]

Why is the NPU not 35 TOPS?

Its like the CPU/NPU is from A16 and the GPU from A17

Indeed. I know it can't be A16, but it does seem like it.

 

[Jimmyjames]

I can’t help feeling like this falls short on the CPU front.
Are they facing some challenges? I mean, aside from slowing core performance increases, it’s odd that they still haven’t gotten to armv9 and SVE yet.

Yeah, I’m really trying to resist the urge to doom, and it’s certainly worth waiting to see actual benchmarks, but it does feel underwhelming to me.

 

[tomO2013]

Anybody else pickup on the fact that the event was shot on iPhone (and edited on Mac) per the cliff notes!
Kind of incredible when you think about it that an iPhone is being used for a major corporate production!

 

[Yoused]

The E cores got so many great upgrades over the years that now they must be quite a big portion of the multi core performance. Really interesting that the M3 Pro is 6+6. I wonder if a 3-tier CPU is in the near future.

No, I think not. Looking at the die shots, with my untrained eye, the E-cores appear to be nearly half the size of the P-cores, when they were closer to a quarter on older designs. This might be partly a quirk of the N3 process, which does not down-scale SRAM very much, but I believe Apple is putting more juice into the E-cores so that they can make good use of them without having to resort to putting in mid-cores.