Revelation: Apple will develop its own camera ISP and two M3 series chips

CTOnews.com, November 11 (Xinhua)-- Apple will launch two M3 series chips using 3nm technology in addition to its existing M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max chips, according to the latest Weibo shared by @ mobile chipset users.

This has triggered speculation from many media and users. At present, it can be confirmed that the fourth block of the series is M3 Ultra, which should be spliced together using "UltraFusion" technology.

As for the fifth M3 series chip, it is worth guessing that it is either the previously exposed Extreme version or the shrunk Lite version.

@ Mobile Chip Talent also said in a follow-up Weibo that Apple's iPhone camera currently uses a combination of Sony CIS sensors and Sony ISP, but Apple is evaluating its own design ISP, which is expected to be produced by TSMC in the second half of 2026.

@ Mobile chip experts think that with the strength of Apple, it is not a problem to design their own ISP for image processing.

CTOnews.com Note: ISP, the abbreviation of "Image Signal Processor", is a unit used to process the output signal of the front-end image sensor.

Popular understanding is that what ISP wants to do is to improve the vision level of the "digital eye" to the level of the "human eye", so that the effect when people see the digital image is as close as possible to the effect when the human eye sees the real scene.