In its latest move to reshape the computer-chip landscape, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) announced the launch of its M3 silicon chip series at the Scary Fast event. The new series includes base, Pro, and Max models, marking Apple's first full CPU family launch. Built on a three-nanometer process, the M3 chip offers significant performance enhancements due to improved CPU and GPU architectures. This development comes three years after Apple's strategic transition from Intel (NASDAQ:INTC) to its own silicon for PCs.
The M3 chip series places Apple in a competitive position against Qualcomm (NASDAQ:QCOM), Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), and AMD (NASDAQ:AMD), who are speculated to be developing ARM chips for PCs. Apple is already accepting pre-orders for M3-based MacBook Pros and iMacs, including the M3 Pro variant.
In contrast to Apple's M3 chip, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chip is built on a 4nm process node and incorporates 12 high-performance cores alongside an Adreno GPU. The GPU delivers up to 4.6 teraflops of graphics processing power. During a benchmarking session, Qualcomm demonstrated the X Elite's capabilities using a setup with 80W and a fan, reaching 4.3GHz for single-threaded tasks and 3.8GHz for multi-threaded tasks.
With the X Elite, Qualcomm aims to fill a gap in the Windows ecosystem which currently lacks an ARM-powered PC chip that can rival Apple’s M-series processors. This move is seen as a potential disruption to Intel's dominance in the PC market.
The introduction of the M3 and X Elite chips represent a paradigm shift towards PCs leveraging mobile-friendly ARM architecture. Both Apple and Qualcomm aim to transition the PC market from Intel's dominance to a computer-chip landscape based on this ARM architecture.
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