Apple M3, M3 Pro & M3 Max - Chip Analysis 

I watched the entire 20 minutes. As a long retired chip designer, this 90B active device world is incomprehensible, but I enjoy following anyway.

As an embedded and FPGA engineer, CPU design like this has always felt like the major leagues. Watching this video must feel to me like watching a sports game with good color commentary feels to a typical American. Thank you for producing this

Sorry for the long wait, the video got longer and longer the more I worked on it... Let me know if you enjoy these (very) deep-dives, or if it's too long/detailed for you. PS: the dynamic caching doesn't have anything to do with the system memory, but it's about the on-chip GPU memory. The whole GPU seems to be complete game changer, something a lot of ppl seem to have missed. This might very well be the most advanced GPU architecture right now and it will take a while until we see it's full potential.

Easily the most informative M3 breakdown. Kudos.

Still watching and man, these deep dives are so fascinating to learn more about silicon design and engineering in our current era. Absolutely amazing work!

Based on benchmark tests, the M3 Pro chip doesn't suck the way its specs on paper would suggest (ie, it has a lower transistor count, lower P-core count, and 1 less GPU count than M2 Pro). It performs similarly to the M2 Pro chip on most tests (on a few tests it performs modestly better), but it seems to use a lot less power as the M3 Pro laptop has a significantly better battery life even with its 100 nit brighter display. Market segmentation is a consideration but it looks like Apple actually delivered a product that is as performant (and in some ways better) than the previous generation while offering significantly better efficiency at the same time. Quite different from the M3 chip, where most of the improvements over M2 seem to be on performance rather than efficiency.

Who wouldn't watch your entire breakdown of apples silicon? Personally I enjoy how this channel focuses on the less talked about features of hardware design, it really makes you understand how much a company can care or not about a product they are launching into the market. Keep up the great work, I cannot wait to watch more of these breakdowns in the future!

I'm certainly watching your every video till the end! Just recently discovered your channel and it's a godsend in terms of amazing in-depth explanations of how exactly all those performances and features are achieved and realized on the silicon level! I've always wanted for someone to explain things like that, like on a truly low level - in terms of hardware - literally talking about transistor counts and how it's all allocated on a chip, designed, interconnected, etc. Thank you so so much for what you're doing on this channel! Keep these amazing videos coming!

It doesn't matter how transistors change, I just know that the knife skills are superb and they are getting expensive again.

Great video I was really looking forward to this one! On the "Dynamic Caching" in the new shader core (aka. register file + image block + group shared = L1). You've watched Apple's video already so I'll try to add some additional practical context to why it's important: It doesn't require new shaders to be written, old shaders are forward-compatible with taking advantage of this feature, however most shaders were indeed written with the limitations that came before it, thus the big advantage would only be felt on shaders that had low occupancy previously and can now maybe have higher occupancy. A lot of shaders are written with say reading a bunch of buffers, and reading a bunch of textures at -some point- typically early, and at this point they'll greatly benefit from high occupancy to hide latency and avoid stalling. But typically, later in the shader, you do a bunch of math that require -a lot of registers- for a short time, and this spike in register count in the old method required that the whole shader demand many registers the whole time, even though for fetching buffers and textures it only needs enough to store the read results in just then. So the benefit here is that you get to have low register pressure when you need high occupancy early in a shader to hide memory latency, and later during "just math" where you don't need occupancy to saturate the math you can now go nuts with registers. Having the freedom to use many registers can make for better algorithms that can take advantage of large amounts of registers without worrying about hurting memory latency in another part. It also provides freedom, you don't have to spend a lot of optimization time getting a magical register count, the shader core does it for you (almost, you still need to make sure you don't need many registers at the time of doing these memory reads), and most importantly, you can now make dynamically branching uber shaders that don't trash your register file usage! Previously we've always had to make many shader variants for specialized cases and compile them either at build or run-time, because a huge shader with tons of branches would have register pressure as bad as the worst case "everything is on" scenario, well now the register pressure is dynamic based on what's enabled! I probably got some parts wrong but I think it's really interesting how much having an L1 cache changes for shaders.

Love these long deep dive videos. When executed well they provide extraordinary value. Time is valuable and this video did not disappoint. Keep up the great work!

You have a gift for articulating these subjects. I have zero chip background but was easily able to follow through to the end.

I watched the whole thing and subscribed. This was a very nice level of analysis for me, and I think you did a great job of overviewing the changes. It seems to me that this gen is taking to heart one of the original RISC tenets, where spending transistors on caches (vs cpu, etc) is a huge win. The tricky part, also from RISC heritage, is that you have to have compilers that can take advantage of the opportunities for caching (and the exposure of opportunities for parallelism). I enjoyed your video a lot. Thanks.

I’m a high school computer teacher and I played it for my students. My students love to keep up with the latest chip news. Thanks for sharing!

I’ve been waiting for this deep dive! Thank you!

this is exactly the type of breakdown/content I was looking for. Really loved watching it, I need to deep dive into each topic and learn more 😀

I always watch your videos from the beginning to the end, since your content is excellent. Thank you again this time.

I love your breakdowns, it’s so fascinating! Watched to 11 min now and aiming for the full 20 min!

im in LOVE with these deep dive videos and i dont even feel like i just watched a 20min video, please keep this video style as long as you can😭

It’s remarkable how much effort you’ve put into producing and researching this, keep it up! 👏

I watched the entire video and I don't think 20 min is particularly long for this kind of content, you did a great job 👌👌

Watched it all, both an overview and a deep dive and I think you nailed the pacing.

Ive never seen any of your videos before but thank you for the depth and relatively simple explanations. Great video!

I watched the entire 20:12 minute video, It was very informative. I personally appreciate these deep dive technical analysis type videos, I learn a-lot more about semiconductor engineering and about the hardware we all take for granted. I am deeply fascinated about where the industry is headed with these process nodes and there optimizations.

I’m in a somewhat similar industry trying to rebalance our product line portfolio and create distinct segmentation and know how many meetings and difficult it is. Im sure there was a ton of stress by folks at Apple (and thus a ton of meetings) when they relanded the M3 Pro calling it a “downgrade”. I can see the product planners and engineers arguing in my head. Watched the whole thing and subscribed. Thanks for doing this.

Love watching your deep dives all the way through, I learn a lot. Thanks!!

Thanks for that one - its length fits quite well to the topic.

Superb deep dive, incredible detail you're covering here. Silicon has come a long way from my early days in the 90's in semi-conductors.

Apple silicon has been such a fantastic leap that I have to remind myself that my M1 Pro is _so_ good that I shouldn't have any need to upgrade. Despite the amazing performance gains of later chips I'm sticking to my 5-8 year upgrade cycle

always love your long deep dive videos

I understood like half of the content but you made it super easy to digest! Great job!

I always watch your videos from start to finish, as they are high quality content!

I really wish Apple would give more details about the dynamic caching stuff. I read the patent filing and it looks interesting. I was hoping the new GPU design is optimized for training ML. Watched the whole video. Hopefully as more people analyze the chip, you can update and identify where the dynamic caching logic sits on the Max chip.

Loved the video especially the visualisation of where everything is on the chips. Watched every second of it.

Watched till the very end! I love technical deep dives like this, looking at chip pictures, talking about process nodes.. awesome vid 😎

Just completed watching this video. As a current chip designer, absolutely love your content and this video in particular was very well done. Would like to see more deep dives like this video.

Don't worry, 20 minutes for such a subject is definitely not too long. Would be great to go even more to the depth. Anyway, great and informative video! 👍

Nice! I watched the entire video and even returned to watch some parts. Thank you for the comparison.

Fantastic video. Thanks for the detailed review. Length of video is fine, detail was exceptional and delivered with enough speed it wasn’t at all boring. Some drag things out so much I fall asleep listening them slowly waffle. Yours was perfect for me.

Thanks for such a detailed analysis. I find these deep dives really interesting and I'm pretty sure many others would agree too. Would surely love to see more of these in future. Cheers!

I love your channel. It’s more or less unbiased. Praising where praises are deserved and criticizing when it’s due. I also love the detail-ness of your content.

Watched from beginning to end, thank you for the deep dive. Very informative!

Loved the video. Watched the whole thing. Always look forward to your deep dives.

The number of transistors on a single chip is breaking my brain. But then, the last chip I was involved with was a long time ago (I ended up going into more software work as we were building software to test and validate our chip designs and that ended up being where I found the love of software engineering)

This is the most intensive yet easily informative piece of Video. I'd say its not long. It's full of info that it never felt long. Lets see what Qualcomm does with their designs after their new acquisition.

Great video man... Love learning more about chip design and watching new products from a design perspective. Keep the great work!

I don’t remember when was the last time I watched a 20 minutes video at a stretch. Great job making it information rich and right on the money. Enjoyed the video and how you compiled it. Please carry on.

Excellent video. I watch a lot of processor analysis videos and product teardowns, and yours is one of the best I've seen. Interestingly, there's a bunch of initial M3 product comparison videos that are reporting M3 as a failure because their benchmark software doesn't take advantage of the improved architecture that Apple has delivered. I would love to see your analysis on the Apple audio chip improvements and the Closed Loop Controller used in the camera system...

Still watching

Appreciated the deep drive, you compared and explained them clearly. Keep up the great content.

This is the in depth analysis I have been waiting for!!!! You must be doing something right as I had never heard of your channel before this video. Keep up the great work!

Keep ‘em coming!

Watched 'till the end :) I'd very much like to see a price estimate for these chips on N3B. Everybody keeps complaining about the SSD and RAM prices that Apple is charging, but my guess would be that the high-spec models are actually *heavily* subsidizing the price of the low-end configurations. A complete laptop with 96B transistors for $3500 vs. a 4090 GPU with 76B for $2000-3000 is very interesting.

Hey love the deep dive videos the longer the better :)

Watched it all the way through. Your deep dives are excellent. Thoroughly enjoyable. Much appreciated.

Great video. First one I saw on your channel and you have earned a new subscriber. As an avid gamer I’ve been interested in seeing Apple push the GPU side since the m1 came out and they started using the same underlying hardware across Mac and iPad. Curious to see both apples support for this segment and adoption by studios.

Exceptional content

Still watching and enjoyed the deep dive. It flies over my head but still interesting to me and learning a lot!

Commenting for the long watch survey. Your content is great; always finish the deep dives! ❤

Came to hear your thoughts on M3 Pro - great breakdown of key components! Although I've read many complaints about the M3 Pro being a "downgrade", I don't think it's a big deal. I think your analysis is sound although on another site they speculated the new Pro design may have been due to issues with achieving an adequate supply of M2 Pro chips through binning of the M2 Max alone which resulted in cost and supply issues. Nicely done - thanks!

Still watching at 10:50 and watched to the end. As a diver the wording makes me chuckle but this dive was neither too deep nor too long. 😉🤿 Last time I got into the nitty gritty of Apple Silicon was when the M1-Series was released. Now that the 3nm chips are out I'm catching up on the developments. It's neat to see an analysis of the actual dies. Good work! ☺

Ive watched this video like 3 times this stuff is so interesting. I appreciate the level of effort you put into this video.

Watched all the way through, time went by like a breeze with your explanations, cheers

Wow thank you I was wanting someone to do a deep dive into the M series, chip sets. I don’t know really anything about how all this works but absolutely love hearing how things are made on a very detailed level. Thank you so much for the undoubtedly, very hard work and research you put into this!

I watched the whole thing. You're, at the moment, the closest thing we have to AnandTech that I can think of. I'm a big fan of Chips & Cheese as well, but those folks sometimes take a long while before coming around the lastest chips like AT used to do. Thanks for confirming the A9 Family GPU is entirely new, some did not believe at. As well as having the common sense to see the M3 Pro is not a downgrade - is its own custom design chip aiming for something differnet than the M3 and the M3 Max.

This was super insightful! Though perhaps it wasn't just sales/profit targets driving the differentiation between the M3 Pro and Max. The Max is really over-the-top for a laptop CPU/GPU and runs quite hot and loud (almost Intel-era-loud) especially in the 14 inch MBP, much more so than the M2 Max did. Battery life is also quite modest relative to other Apple M machines. So the M3 Pro serves as a new middle ground for people who want more performance and features than what the base M3 offers, but don't want the battery life and noise compromises that come with the Max, as insanely powerful as that chip may be.

Another excellent video! I always go all the way to the end in your videos. Keep up with the great work!

I love your Deep dive Videos i've watched all of them till the end you know your stuff very entertaining keep up the good work!

This is great video!

This was the best analysis I've seen so far on Apple M3 chips, especially on the M3 Pro chip and it's design purpose. It makes so much more sense and was constructive, objective analysis than 99% of other reviewers simply bashing on Apple without clear explanation.

Wonderful video. The whole thing was interesting and well constructed. I especially liked the summary at the end.

Thanks for that very comprehensive video. I watched it until the end and it was a very interesting deep dive. Thanks for that!

The M3 NPU may be multiplexing the processing units, time-sharing 8 NPUs to get a (slower) 16 NPUs group. Like switched capacitor op-amps allow multiple poles/op-amp.

Fantastic work! The M3 definitely looks like maybe the TSMC troubles with the new node may have forced Apple make some tradeoffs they didn't want. I wonder if the advances in the GPU cores is also changing the needs of the NPU compute types... can more AI workloads move to the GPU with the new architecture?

watched the entire video, really good analysis. subbed.

I’m still watching, and I’m planning to watch the entire thing! I appreciate the detailed discussion and I find it very fascinating.

These deep dives are great - I did watch the whole thing (though at 2x speed). A lot of the interesting architectural details just aren't captured in specs like core and transistor counts.

If I had to take a guess at the why the NPU hasn't been taking up much more die area I would say that it's likely because they haven't found an architecture they love that doesn't take a lot of power. Instead they're keeping with their current solution and upgrading with space and power being the driving forces, especially since that's Apples Silicon Architecture design default. It's also hard to tell if it's actually that much more powerful or not between generations since TOPS doesn't tell you much about an NPU. For example, is this combined int8 and float32 TOPS? Did they add support for smaller int4 TOPS? How does is the NPU caching affecting this number?

long videos i love it, watched it all keep m coming

Don't worry about 10+ minute videos, i could watch an hour of this!

I'm still puzzled why apple did not introduce a Server / AI focussed chip yet, seeing how Nvidia, AMD and Intel make massive amounts of cash with that. Something like a M3 Server edition with either a ton of CPU or GPU or NPU cores for their Mac Pro. The energy efficiency would certainly make them a great competitor to the already mentioned.

Love these deepdive vidso. I think these chip are a modern wonder of mankind, its mind blowing how we are able to design and produce something with 92 billion switches

Well done. 👍🏼 I also watched the whole video, quality information. Thank you!

This is exactly the high quality and great content I learnt to expect from this channel. It seemed like a 5 minute video to me. Right at my knowledge/interest level, incredibly educational and engaging/entertaining. Looking forward to all your videos

I’ve kind of been thinking that in some ways the base M2 was underpowered (specifically lacking the extra display controller), yet the M2 Pro was maybe overkill. I’d prefer the M3 also have an extra display controller, but making a smaller M3 Pro is also one way to do it. The M3 Pro seems like a pretty good solution it you want a MacBook that runs cool. And yeah, watched the whole video. Very fascinating. Thanks for making it!

Thank you. 🙏

I did like your approach while explaining the dye of the SoC. Keep up the good work! Thank you.

Your videos are amazongly well made, and the cintent is mint. These technical videos are all Id ever watch if possible lol.

Kind of impressive how M3 Pro is slightly faster than M2 Pro (CPU wise) despite using fewer transistors and keeping the same number of total cores.

Fantastic analysis. The M3 N3B node entered mass production late last year which implies that it was designed about 1.5 years ago or longer. This was all before ChatGPT and AI changed the world. So I suspect the Neural Engine to grow in size for the M4.

I watched the entire video and was quite fascinated. Thanks very much for taking the time to produce this.

going to uni next year and really interested in these analysis videos. you're making a truly stunning job!

There has been rumors of the iPad Pro getting a huge price increase to $1500-$1800 So I think maybe M3 Pro might be a “downgrade” so they can put it in the iPad to push more gaming on the iPad and to further segment iPad Pro from the iPad Air. And a few months ago, someone said Apple was working on a 14.1 inch iPad Pro with M3 Pro and when I saw the announcement of less CPU and GPU cores it made that leak even more believable

I'm so hungry for these types of videos, I wish it had another 20 minutes in it comparing the GPU of Apple silicon to other GPU's like RTX 4090, since you calculated the estimated size percentage of GPU vs the entire die, you could have easily compared it to other GPU's, for example: + You said M3 Max's GPU takes roughly 35% of the 92B chip, that's roughly 32B transistors, for comparison RTX 4070 is a 35.8B chip. + You said M3's GPU takes about 23% of 25B, that's 5.75B transistors, for comparison a GTX 1650 is a 4.7B chip, and 1660 is a 6.6B chip. It kind of puts things into perspective and how much Apple need to get competitive with say a 4090 (76B)...

11:00 I just paused to comment… I’m watching every second because I haven’t found this level of detail about these chips said in such a succinct way. Thank you for keeping it entertaining and informative.

watched it all - thanks for the hard work.

*I wonder if we will finally get the true apple silicon Mac Pro this generation. With up and maybe beyond 128 performance CPU cores.*

always, every segment, all the way through. mb

Fascinating, and the depth of review is much appreciated. The lack of bias in particular makes this.

I watched it all to the end, your analysis are excellent and the deep dives is what I love