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Not every generation of Apple Silicon will get an ‘Ultra’ chip

MacDailyNews

Mar 5

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M3 Ultra features a 32-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, double the Neural Engine cores, Thunderbolt 5, and support for the most unified memory ever in a personal computer. The new chip delivers up to 2.6x the performance of M1 Ultra, along with Thunderbolt 5 connectivity and support for more than half a terabyte of unified memory — the most ever in a personal computer.

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:
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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.

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MacDailyNews Take: From now on, all Apple Silicon “ultra” chips may be odd-numbered.

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