Which means this is a whole new chip. It may be M3 based, but with added interposer support and new thunderbolt stuff.
Which, at this point, why not just use M4 as a base?
>Which, at this point, why not just use M4 as a base?
I imagine that making those chips is quite a bit more involved than just taking the files for M3 Max, and copy-pasting them twice into a new project.
I imagine it just takes more time to design/verify/produce them; especially given they're not selling very many of them, so they're probably not super-high-priority projects.
Re:Apple M3 Ultra
by kridsdale1 on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @02:50PM
(#43271396)
Could be that M4 requires a different TSMC fab that is at full production doing iPhones.
Re:Apple M3 Ultra
by operatingthetan on Wednesday March 05, 2025 @02:59PM
(#43271527)
Or they are saving the M4 Ultra name for later on ...
The press-release even calls TB5 out: >Each Thunderbolt 5 port is supported by its own custom-designed controller directly on the chip.
Given that they're doing the same on A-series chips (A18 Pro with 10Gbps USB-C; A18 with USB 2.0); I imagine it's just relatively simple to swap the I/O blocks around and they're doing this for cost and/or product segmentation reasons.