Apple unveiled the M3 chips in its Scary Fast event late last month, which consists of the base chip, alongside a Pro and a Max variant. The Ultra variant was notably not mentioned during the event. Which is not entirely surprising, as these usually don’t show up until much later in a chip’s generational span. But it looks like this variant has not yet entered “broad testing” stages.
Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, via his weekly Power On newsletter, reports that Apple started rolling out its latest M3 chips on comparatively lower-volume machines like the iMac and MacBook Pro. This is because the supply of 3nm chips are still limited, relatively speaking. Therefore, the Ultra variant is reserved for even lower-volume items that need to be much more powerful, such as the Mac Studio and Mac Pro.
As mentioned above though, this variant “hasn’t yet gone into broad testing”, fitting the trend of a large gap between the launch of the base chip and its Ultra variant. Though it’s not exactly safe to say that it will be a one-year wait as the generation before. To compare, the base M2 chip was announced in June of last year, and it would be a whole year before its Ultra variant was revealed. Granted, this generation of chips had its Pro and Max variants showing up in between the two extremes of the spectrum.
Also noted within the newsletter is that a new Mac Studio is in development, which may indeed sport the M3 Ultra. This will likely show up sometime next year, alongside 13- and 15-inch models of the MacBook Air, as well as a Mac mini.
(Source: Bloomberg)
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