Apple's M1 chip sets a new standard for power and efficiency in the industry. The new Macbook Pro 14-inch and MacBook Pro 16-inch are a testament to the capabilities of Apple's silicon. Not surprisingly, it appears that Apple will continue to rely on its own chips in future Mac machines. According to a new report, Apple's chip manufacturing partner TSMC has already begun test production of what is presumed to be the Apple M3 chip.

According to Taiwanese supply chain magazine Digitimes (via MacRumors), TSMC will begin test production of chips manufactured on a 3-nanoprocess (known as N3) by Q4 2022. After that, the company plans to start shipping 3nm chips to partners such as Intel and Apple in the first quarter of 2023.

Of course, Apple has several other new chips expected to hit the market before 2023: as reported by The Information, the Apple M2 chip is expected to ship in 2022, and the existing M1, M1 Pro, and M1 Max chips (all of which are manufactured on 5 nm process). By comparison, the M2 will feature two dies and should achieve twice the performance of Apple's current chips.

The 3nm chips will reportedly have up to four dies and up to 40 CPU cores per chip. Therefore, performance over the upcoming M2 chip should not be a problem. By comparison, the M1 Pro chip uses 8-10 cores, while the M1 Max uses 14-16 cores.

The M3 chip (as it is currently called) should be faster and more battery efficient than the M1 Pro and M1 Max chips; the M3 will reportedly not be produced until the end of 2022, so it will likely not be available in Mac devices until 2023.

While that is still more than a year away, the prospect of Apple hardware powered by the M3 is exciting, especially given the performance of the current M1 chip family. Furthermore, it is possible that Apple will make an official announcement about the new silicon at CES next month. Until then, here is a look at all the products Apple is expected to release in 2022.