M3 and M3 Max transistor budget increased
The new Apple M3 single-chip systems have switched to the 3 nm process technology, but not all have become better than the previous generation, judging solely by the characteristics. The same M3 Pro not only has fewer cores and lower memory bandwidth, it simply contains fewer transistors.
The Apple M3 Pro SoC not only has fewer cores than the M2 Pro but also contains fewer transistors
According to the latest data, the M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max contain 25, 37, and 92 billion transistors respectively. For comparison, M2, M2 Pro, and M2 Max respectively have 20, 40, and 67 billion. That is, we see that in the case of M2 Pro the transistor budget was cut, apparently due to the removal of one graphics core, changes in the configuration of the CPU cores, and changes in the power subsystem. However in the M3 Max, the number of transistors has increased significantly relative to the M2 Max, but the new SoC has many more cores.
As for the M3 Max, its 92 billion transistors are, of course, less than the M2 Ultra’s incredible 134 billion, but it’s still a huge number. For comparison, even the 96-core AMD Epyc Genoa contains 90 billion.
