Apple today debuted M6 in the new Mac mini and M5 Ultra in the new Mac Studio, providing an extraordinary leap in performance and AI capabilities. M6, Apple’s first state-of-the-art 2-nanometer chip, advances every compute block, delivering gains across every dimension of performance. The chip features a larger 12-core CPU complex with the world’s fastest CPU core, a larger 12-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, and up to 170GB/s of unified memory bandwidth. M5 Ultra, the ultimate powerhouse for pro and AI workloads, uses next-generation UltraFusion technology to form a quad-die architecture for the first time in an M-series system on a chip (SoC). The chip includes an up-to-36-core CPU and up-to-80-core GPU with a massive 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth, 50 percent more than M3 Ultra. With their advanced technologies, these SoCs deliver extraordinary compute with industry-leading power efficiency, empowering users to do even more on a desktop. “Today, we’re debuting the next giant leap in performance and AI compute for Apple silicon with the incredibly advanced M6 and the most powerful M-series chip yet, M5 Ultra,” said Sri Santhanam, Apple’s vice president of Silicon Engineering Group, in a statement. “Built using the cutting-edge 2 nm process, M6 combines a new CPU complex, two additional CPU and GPU cores, a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, and more unified memory bandwidth to power through workloads with amazing energy efficiency. And for the ultimate desktop performance and the ability to run massive AI models, M5 Ultra features a massive GPU, now with Neural Accelerators, and more unified memory bandwidth, pushing the boundaries of what a desktop can do.” M6: Optimized Design and Enhanced Performance Designed to power the workflows of everyday users, students, developers, AI hobbyists, and enterprises, M6 offers the ideal balance of performance, power efficiency, and on-device AI to effortlessly fly through daily tasks, coding, and creative projects.
M6 has a brand-new 12-core CPU complex — two more cores than M5 — that consists of 2 super cores, 4 performance cores, and 6 efficiency cores. It delivers the world’s fastest single-threaded performance and up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance as compared to M5, and up to 2.4x faster than M1. The super cores blaze through single-threaded workloads, the performance cores use less power and join the super cores to run demanding multithreaded workloads, and the efficiency cores handle everyday background tasks — all with industry-leading performance per watt. As a result, demanding CPU tasks such as editing images, compiling code, indexing new files, and running agentic AI workloads are faster than ever. Accelerated GPU and Faster Memory Bandwidth M6 features a 12-core GPU — two more cores than M5 — with a Neural Accelerator in each core. This design delivers a nearly 30 percent increase in peak GPU compute for AI compared to M5, and more than 8x compared to M1, enabling significantly faster prompt processing when interacting with on-device LLMs. In addition, M6 offers Apple’s latest advanced graphics capabilities, including updates to the shader core architecture, Dynamic Caching, and hardware-accelerated ray tracing. These technologies combine to deliver stunning visual realism, faster rendering, and higher frame rates for gaming. M6 also has 50 percent increased geometry rates for complex graphics. M6 supports up to 32GB of unified memory to multitask across demanding apps and run LLMs on device for secure and private agentic tasks. It also provides up to 170GB/s of unified memory bandwidth — a 10 percent increase over M5 and a 2.5x increase over M1. M5 Ultra: The Ultimate Powerhouse for Pro Workflows M5 Ultra, Apple’s most powerful chip ever, is built for pros who need to speed through workloads that demand maximum CPU and GPU performance and unified memory bandwidth, such as complex 3D rendering, visual effects, scientific analysis, and running compute-intensive frontier AI models on device.
M5 Ultra uses UltraFusion to connect two dual-die M5 Max chips to form the quad-die architecture — a first for Apple silicon. UltraFusion increases the inter-die bandwidth to over 4.4TB/s and the connection density by over 6x. Together, these ultra-low-latency, high-bandwidth interconnects allow the four dies to behave as a single unified processor. M5 Ultra also features a large up-to-36-core CPU consisting of 12 super cores and 24 performance cores, delivering up to 1.25x higher single-threaded performance and up to 1.3x higher multithreaded performance than M3 Ultra. Unprecedented AI and Graphics, Massive Memory Capacity M5 Ultra features a next-generation GPU with up to 80 cores, incorporating a Neural Accelerator in each core to offer up to 4.5x the peak GPU compute for AI compared to M3 Ultra and over 6x more than M1 Ultra. The GPU includes Apple’s latest shader core with second-generation Dynamic Caching, as well as hardware-accelerated mesh shading and third-generation ray tracing, delivering up to 40 percent faster graphics performance than M3 Ultra. M5 Ultra incorporates a more capable Media Engine. Dedicated hardware-enabled H.264, HEVC, four ProRes encode and decode engines, and hardware-accelerated AV1 decode make it the ultimate solution for high-resolution video editing. M5 Ultra also includes a 32-core Neural Engine, driving complex AI tasks and Apple Intelligence features securely on device with industry-leading energy efficiency. Additionally, M5 Ultra features a massive amount of high-bandwidth unified memory, up to 512GB, and delivers a staggering 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth that is 50 percent higher than M3 Ultra. This lets users store huge datasets entirely in local memory, increase the tokens-per-second speed, and run huge LLMs with hundreds of billions of parameters entirely on device. Unleashing Power for Developers Apple’s developer frameworks and tools — including Core AI, Core ML, Metal, and Xcode — tap directly into the advanced hardware of both chips. Developers can leverage the Dual 16-core Neural Engine in M6, and the Neural Accelerators in the GPU with the massive 512GB unified memory pool and faster 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth in M5 Ultra, to provide incredible AI compute capabilities. With these frameworks and new chips, developers can run and fine-tune large AI models locally on their Mac. Apple’s developer tools and frameworks automatically optimize performance across the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine, and give developers the ability to use Apple Foundation Models, App Intents to tap into Apple Intelligence features, or their own proprietary AI models to build and run powerful AI workloads entirely on device. MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s M5 Ultra. For when you absolutely, positively need to decode the human genome before your morning coffee. Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon. The post Apple intros M6, its first 2 nm chip, and M5 Ultra for a big leaps in performance and AI compute appeared first on MacDailyNews. You're currently a free subscriber to MacDailyNews. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.
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