Analyst: Apple spent as much as $1 billion on the M3 processor line-up’s design

Analyst Jay Goldberg from Digits to Dollars believes the company spent as much as $1 billion on the M3’s design and tape-outs alone, reports Tom’s Hardware.

“We have to assume that [M3-series] tape out costs alone for the three [SoCs] has to be close to $1 billion,” Goldberg wrote. “Very few companies can afford this large an undertaking.”

At Monday’s “Scary Fast” event, Apple announced M3, M3 Pro, and M3 Max. They’re the first personal computer chips built using the 3-nanometer process technology, allowing more transistors to be packed into a smaller space and improving speed and efficiency.