It has been claimed by Apple that the Mac series will begin to be updated with artificial intelligence performance-oriented M4 chips in late 2024. Apple launched the M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips simultaneously in October last year. In this sense, there is a high probability that the M4 series will arrive in the same time period. Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman says the entire Mac lineup could get the M4 chip in late 2024 and early 2025.
According to Gurman, first the iMac, entry-level 14-inch MacBook Pro, high-end 14-inch MacBook Pro, 16-inch MacBook Pro and Mac mini machines will be updated with M4 chips. This will be followed by 13-inch and 15-inch MacBook Air models in spring 2025, Mac Studio in mid-2025, and Mac Pro in late 2025.
Apple is said to be nearing production of its M4 processor, and the processor is expected to come in at least three main flavors. The chips are coded as Donan for the low level, Brava for the middle level and Hydra for the high level. The Donan chip will be used in the entry-level MacBook Pro, MacBook Air and entry-level Mac mini, while the Brava chips will be used in the high-end MacBook Pro and high-end Mac mini.
The Hydra chip is said to be designed for Mac Pro. This shows that it is an Ultra or Extreme layer chip. Mac Studio is thought to be testing an unreleased M3-era chip and versions of the M4 Brava processor, possibly featuring a higher-end variation of the M4 Pro and M4 Max Brava chips. M4 versions of Mac desktops are expected to support up to 512GB of Unified Memory.
The M4 chips will be built on the same 3-nanometer process as the M3 chips, but TSMC may use an improved version of the 3-nanometer process to improve performance and power efficiency. Apple also plans to add a much more advanced Neural Engine with a larger number of cores for AI tasks.
