Apple debuts its ‘most powerful chip ever’ in M5 Ultra and M6
Apple has unveiled its new M5 Ultra and M6 processors, designed to handle intensive AI workloads and local large language model processing. The M6 chip, built on a 2nm process, focuses on energy efficiency and improved GPU performance for everyday users.
Why it matters
These chips represent Apple's strategic push to integrate advanced AI capabilities directly into consumer hardware.
Apple announced two new processors on Tuesday, which power its new Mac Mini and Mac Studio models: the M5 Ultra and M6 chips.
The M5 Ultra, which Apple deems its “most powerful chip ever,” fuses two dual-die M5 Max chips to form Apple’s first quad-die chip, designed to manage hefty AI workloads. The chip includes an up-to-36 core CPU and up-to-80 core GPU and 1.2 TB/s of unified memory bandwidth, which is 50% more than the M3 Ultra , which Apple released only about a year and a half ago.
While the M5 Ultra is designed for professionals doing compute-intensive work like complex 3D rendering, visual effects, and running frontier AI models, the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra will no doubt appeal to hobbyist AI developers as well. But Apple’s M6 chip is more geared toward these everyday users, according to the company.
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