When asked why the high-end Mac Studio was getting an M3 Ultra chip instead of an M4 Ultra, Apple told Ars Technica that not every Apple Silicon generation will get an “Ultra” chip.
The M3 Ultra is the highest-performing chip Apple has ever created, offering the most powerful CPU and GPU in a Mac, double the Neural Engine cores, and the most unified memory ever in a personal computer. M3 Ultra also features Thunderbolt 5 with more than 2x the bandwidth per port for faster connectivity and robust expansion. M3 Ultra is built using Apple’s innovative UltraFusion packaging architecture, which knits together two M3 Max dies over 10,000 high-speed connections that offer low latency and high bandwidth. This allows the system to treat the combined dies as a single, unified chip for massive performance, delivering a total of 184 billion transistors.
Andrew Cunningham for Ars Technica:
This is, as far as I can recall, the first time that Apple has said anything like this in public.
This statement doesn’t totally preclude the possibility of an eventual M4 Ultra—if Apple wanted to put more space in between the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro, reserving its best chip for the Mac Pro could be one way to do it. But it does suggest that Apple will skip the M4 Ultra entirely, opting to refresh these gigantic and niche chips on a slower cadence than the rest of its processors.
And while an “M4 Ultra” has appeared in some rumors about the next-gen Mac Studio update, that processor’s core counts match up with what Apple announced as the M3 Ultra today.
MacDailyNews Take: From now on, all Apple Silicon “ultra” chips may be odd-numbered.
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Apple’s roadmap hit a huge snag with their ultrafusuion buss technology (which allows two chips to act as one).
The chief issue is economies of scale. It is used in such low-volume, high-end Mac’s, cost becomes a massive issue.
Worse yet, Apple had planned on making a 4x chip-in-on, in the Extreme series, but costs and yields jumped out of control, and cancelled the program…
There is information suggesting Apple’s M3 Ultra would move to a United, single processor, just much, much larger and as capable as an Ultra version of the same version, with a much lower cost than an Ultra processor.
This still appears to be in the works, but the transition from a dual-chip Ultra to a single processor Ultra clearly threw off the roadmap.
What we have is an M3 Ultra with better performance, suddenly emerging now, as a shoehorn to buy Apple time, and provide the best-ever performance delivered to Pro users who need this type of power.
The united in one piece of silicon M4 Ultra (perhaps skipping and launching as an M5 Ultra), could arrive later this year, but really, more likely in a year or so from now…
I’m guessing it’ll be an M5 architecture, and it’ll be a pretty amazingly monstrous desktop chipset. It’ll also be used exclusively in the Mac Pro high-end configuration.
How can Apple afford to do this in such a low-selling system? Simple. Right now Apple is buildings tens of thousands of their own internal “X-Serves” (ha!), for their own AI rollout. They are currently using the M2 Ultra, and will likely continue to do so for the next year or so. However, when Apple is ready to launch a M5 Ultra (which will now be a single processor), they will launch it in the Mac Pro and replace the M2 Ultra on their internal servers with this processor.
Apple will have solved cost per chip by:
1. Taking the Ultra and its net generation M5 ultra into a single piece of silicon. Big savings.
2. Economies of scale, in using it 5x more on its internal server deployment, more so than it would ever sell in a Mac Studio + Mac Pro. Thus, Apple will be able to scale the processor and push pricing down to new levels it hadn’t been able to achieve with the old Ultra architecture and not having volume production without it’s own in-house server customer to support.
This begs the question: Could Apple then build a cost-effective M5 Extreme (which would repeat the ultra fusion, 2-in-1 processor? I’d argue, only if they choose it’s worth it to utilize it in their servers. If not, the volume and cost would simply never justify going forward over a very cost effective, performance effective, and volume effective M5 single-silicon Ultra.
What a big let down. The Mac Pro is dead.
This is a glorified mac mini.
Apple is so mismanaged it cant even release its processors in the right order. Start with an ultra, then the max, then the pro, and then the regular low power unit. People who use the ultra dont want to pay extra only to be eclipsed by the next gen Max released a few months later.
The M4max has better single core speed then the M3max, and is way better bang for the buck overall. And if all youre interested in is multicore, it’s much cheaper to network a few mac minis.
Apple cannot be bothered and is too incompetent to even slap the M3max into the Mac Pro, yet is still selling the M2ultra in the Mac Pro. It’s beyond dysfunctional and is an embarrassment.
It’s time to do a bozo purge at apple Like Steve Jobs regularly has done. The trains are not running on time, most cylinders are not firing, and apple is now DEI mismanaged and coasting on iPhone work that is generations old.
Apple needs to fire 90% of its employees, the vast majority of which are bozos, along with it’s bozo in chief.
Apple needs a master chef, but instead it has a lousy cook.
lame, copy-paste, spam comment, get a life, this chip is waaay faster than your brain
Lame is this chip. If I need a life for posting it, I’d say it says more about your need to respond to it.
Nvidia little AI box. all they need is a good OS. linux ain’t it.
if they actually sell that thing for 1500, you can toe tag Apple’s desktops.