A report from the Taiwanese publication Commercial Times claims that Apple Silicon will maintain an 18-month upgrade cycle compared to the iPhone and Apple Watch chips that are updated every 12 months.

For the most part, the report repeats previously reported information. It cites industry sources who say Apple will update the Apple Silicon, that powers the Mac lineup, every 18 months. Based on that information, the report speculates that the next-generation M2 chip should debut sometime in the second half of 2022. For now, it is reportedly codenamed Staten. Meanwhile, the M2 Pro and M2 Max chips are expected to be released in the first half of 2023.

A translation of the report reads:

“According to sources in the supply chain industry, Apple Silicon will be updated every 18 months in the future. In the second half of 2022, Apple will first launch the M2 processor code-named Staten, and in the first half of 2023, it will launch the new M2X processor architecture code-named Rhodes and release two processors such as M2 Pro and M2 Max according to the different graphics cores. Apple’s M2 series processors all use the 4-nanometer process and will be updated to the M3 series processors after an 18-month cycle. It is expected that they will be mass-produced using TSMC’s 3-nanometer process.”

Prior to the birth of the M1 chip, Apple was reliant on Intel’s innovation and process stack for new chips. This affected Apple’s timelines and its ability to innovate. With Apple Silicon, the Mac maker has end-to-end control of the funnel, right from hardware-level integrations to software-level functionality. This gives Apple the freedom to update Apple Silicon as frequently as it desires but given that most people won’t upgrade a mac as often as an iPhone or Apple Watch, a slightly longer update cycle seems reasonable.

The M1 chip debuted in November 2020, and this year, Apple introduced the M1 Max and M1 Pro in October. Rumor has it that the M2 chip has already entered production and will follow in 2022 while the M2 Max and M2 Pro will come in 2023 powering a new generation of Macs.