Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
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Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
#2Apple announced the M3 on October 30 last year, roughly 6 months ago. Have they ever announced successive chip designs in such a short time frame?
Unless Mark Gurman has a record of making reliable predictions about Apple, I wouldn't give this much credence.
Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
#3Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
#4Maybe around M6 or M7 they'll release an external monitor that does more than 60hz.
Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
#5Apple announced the M3 on October 30 last year, roughly 6 months ago. Have they ever announced successive chip designs in such a short time frame? Unless Mark Gurman has a record of making reliable predictions about Apple, I wouldn't give this much credence.
It's not completely insane.
1. N3B TSMC node used by M3 is reportedly low yielding. Apple likely wants to move away from it asap and move to N3E, which is the higher yielding node.
2. Rumors are that M3 Ultra is not planned due to low yields. M3 Max die shot does not have UltraFusion silicon. This supports the first theory.
3. Apple base the M chips on the A series cores. A18 Pro has already finished in design because Apple always starts making A series chips in Spring before a Fall debut. Therefore, A18 Pro is already in production using N3E node. Given enough early planning, it isn't surprising that M4 can be released early.
4. Reportedly, Apple plans to focus on GenAI at WWDC. They're also behind in GenAI. In order to catch up, they need to be aggressive. M4 is likely to have a big improvement in inference speed via the NPU and/or GPU.
Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
#6At first I thought, it sounded crazy but then I realized that reports have told us that the M4 will be a key part of Apple’s reneweed AI strategy for 2024. The A18 and M4 in the iPhone 16 and the M4 MacBook Pros at the ens of this year will have much better neural engines to drive Apple’s WWDC 2024 AI features. Apple can’t leave the iPad Pro out to dry.
Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
#7They need to stop calling these pro devices. They are barely functional for anything beyond casual use and artwork
Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
#8My guess is that M4 and forwards will not be so much about CPU and GPU performance but have some sort of local LLM in ROM. So every year you should upgrade to get the best hardware LLM ever released.
Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
#9Speaking of the Mac Studio M4, Apple is considering having it support up to a half-terabyte of memory. In comparison, the existing Mac Studio and Mac Pro top out at 192GB of unified memory (RAM).
(according to Tom's guide). I wonder if it will still be on-chip.
Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro
#10Apple announced the M3 on October 30 last year, roughly 6 months ago. Have they ever announced successive chip designs in such a short time frame? Unless Mark Gurman has a record of making reliable predictions about Apple, I wouldn't give this much credence.
It's not completely insane. 1. N3B TSMC node used by M3 is reportedly low yielding. Apple likely wants to move away from it asap and move to N3E, which is the higher yielding node. 2. Rumors are that M3 Ultra is not planned due to low yields. M3 Max die shot does not have UltraFusion silicon. This supports the first theory. 3. Apple base the M chips on the A series cores. A18 Pro has already finished in design becaus…
Think that whole major, unpatchable security flaw thing could also play a part? I could see them wanting to put distance between themselves on that fast too.