Apple’s next-generation custom silicon chips, the M3-series, has reportedly entered testing, with Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman claiming that Apple’s first M3-equipped machines could begin arriving “toward the end of the year or early next year.”
In his weekly Power On newsletter, Guman said Apple has “begun putting next-generation Macs with the M3 chips through their paces, testing them with third-party apps to ensure compatibility with its software ecosystem.”
Gurman says the M3 chip in testing features 12 CPU cores, 18 graphics cores and 36 gigabytes of memory, with it said that the chip is for a future high-end MacBook Pro with the upcoming macOS 14.0 and likely is the base-level version of what will be the M3 Pro coming next year.
“If the chip in testing is indeed the base-level M3 Pro, that would mean the increase in core counts compared with the M2 Pro would be similar to the jump from the M1 Pro to the M2 Pro,” says Gurman.
It has previously been rumored that Apple would launch several new Macs powered by the M3 chip, including an updated 24-inch iMac, refreshed 13-inch MacBook Pro and an updated 13-inch MacBook Air.