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Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

macrumors.com

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Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#11

Post by aurareturn »

CSSer wrote: post #10
aurareturn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think so. I think M4 was planned years in advance to debut around this time. You can't change this stuff in a few months.

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#13

Post by listic »

aurareturn wrote: post #5
tromp wrote: post #2

Apple 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…

> They're also behind in GenAI

Where can I read up on that and what's state of the art in consumer GenAI chips?

Also thanks, all great points!

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#15

Post by aurareturn »

retskrad wrote: post #6

At 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.

For the first time in a long time, consumer hardware is not even close to being fast enough for a new type of mass applications: GenAI.

People have stopped caring about consumer chips because they have been "good enough" for a long time.

Hardware is getting exciting again. We need significantly more compute, memory bandwidth, and memory capacity. There are huge bottlenecks everywhere.

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#18

Post by jessriedel »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #7

They need to stop calling these pro devices. They are barely functional for anything beyond casual use and artwork

I am a physicists (theory), and about a third of my work is “pencil and paper” calculations (and related notes) on the iPad Pro. I use it professionally ~20 hours per week.

Re: Bloomberg: "Strong possibility" of M4 debuting on May 7 with new iPad Pro

#20

Post by ZiiS »

Jam-O wrote: post #8

My 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.

The whole article hinges on them adding more inference power to the Neural Engine, but the is no benifit or plausable reason to burn weights into ROM.
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