Rumor: M4 MacBook Pro with AI enhancements expected at the end of 2024
Apple's next generation M4 Apple Silicon, is expected to arrive before the end of 2024, and is rumored to have a greater focus on AI than ever before.
Apple's M3 chip family
Barely half a year after the introduction of the M3 generation and ahead of the likely launch of the M3 Ultra chip at WWDC, rumors are circulating about the M4 generation. It is now claimed that Apple is not only preparing to start the manufacture of the new chips, but it will also be a heavily AI-focused release.
According to Bloomberg on Thursday, an update to its Mac lineup is expected to start late in 2024, extending into early 2025. These launches will include new iMacs, a new low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro units, and Mac minis, all using the M4 generation.
The M4 generation is claimed to be nearing production, people with knowledge of the chip said to Bloomberg. There will allegedly be three main varieties launched, codenamed Donan, Brava, and Hidra. These are likely the core M4 chip for Donan, the Brava is said to be the M4 Pro and M4 Max, with the Hidra rumored to be destined for the Mac Pro.
For these chip launches, Apple is apparently going to highlight the AI processing capabilities of the next generation and their integration with macOS during WWDC.
Gurman doesn't offer exactly what will change with the chips, save for upping the memory on the top-end Hidra chip to support up to half a terabyte of memory.
The most plausible way for Apple to make its chips more AI-centric is to make changes to the Neural Engine, or add more cores. Apple's Neural Engine is an element designed to assist with machine learning-accelerated tasks.
In February, reports said the M4 and A18 processors will have more AI computing cores, which would seemingly mean the Neural Engine.
Gurman's report is plausible, but other than codenames, it's easily derivable by educated guesses. It's obvious that Apple will be working on an M4 chip, and a move to an annual cycle would help increase the rate of upgrades for its Mac hardware lineup with consumers.
The move to three chips may echo the M3 launch sequence Apple used, bringing out the M3 alongside the Pro and Max varieties at the same time instead of spreading apart the releases across the year. However, Apple making only three chips for M4 would be a departure from the established range of four chip tiers.
Rumor Score: Possible
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
There is speculation that Apple will have a discrete monolithic M3 Ultra chip with a silicon bridge to make a M3 Extreme consisting of 2 M3 Ultra chips. That would be interesting. If so, this could open up a MBP18 model or MBP16 with the M3 Ultra. Just not a lot of customers for a Mac Studio with Ultra or a Mac Pro with Ultra or Extreme.
Apple has indeed been delivering a Neural Processing Unit for years. However, even M3 Max is only delivering the ML performance of iPhone 14 Pro (17-18 TOPS). Intel is doing 34 TOPS with their 2023 laptop CPUs (combined NPU+GPU) and Lunar Lake will launch this year with 100 TOPS performance for laptops. Standing still is why the stock is dropping.
Something will need to change. I would have killed M3 Ultra and asked the entire team to work on M4 or refocused M3 Ultra on ML at any cost to show at WWDC.
Since smaller models will be optimised for fast inference anyway, what are they going to bring that will be significant?
Said it right. Often people have little knowledge about the subject matter but me too comment. AI is not one or nothing.
but I could imagine Apple skipping the ultra for the m3 lineup and bringing it back for m4.
As an aside, talking about AI in general, I was playing with an audio AI yesterday and was able to split apart an 8-Track 1" reel to reel multitrack recording I made of a band 40 years ago that was mixed down to a half-track Revox Tape machine and had echo and reverb. I had digitized this decades ago as soon as the tech was possible, so all I had was a single stereo digital file. I was able to remove echo and reverb, then separate the instruments and vocals and remix in Logic Pro. This using an M2 Mac Studio Ultra that performed the entire operation in under a minute.
It was mind boggling. I can well imagine on an M4, Logic having this ability built in. What a time we live in!
the threat to AAPL is Xi. If he starts a war over Taiwan, AAPL is toast. Even if it’s not a shooting war, but just an embargo or some other extreme bullying/provocation that falls short of war, it will be bad for AAPL.
It's fun to see the code names, and I think Apple Insider is right to guess they are for M4, M4 Pro, M4 Max, but they don't tell us anything beyond confirming (if that guess is correct) the M4 launch will have the same marketing/naming structure as the M3 launch.
I'll try to find it, it wasn't an anonymous internet commenter or anything, it described the change, but it was only like two sentences and now I can't find it.
It'll be so last year compared to the shiny new M4 Macbooks with all the AI bells and whistles.