Apple has announced its latest and most powerful processor, the M3 Ultra, promising significant performance enhancements over previous generations. The chip will power the new Mac Studio and is positioned as Apple's top-tier silicon offering.
The M3 Ultra uses Apple's UltraFusion architecture, combining two M3 Max chips into one unified processor via more than 10,000 high-speed connections. This results in a total of 184 billion transistors, providing substantial performance gains while maintaining energy efficiency.
Apple claims the M3 Ultra delivers up to 2.6 times the performance of the M1 Ultra and doubles the bandwidth capabilities of previous generations by incorporating Thunderbolt 5. The new Mac Studio equipped with this chip is optimized for intensive tasks such as artificial intelligence, 3D rendering, high-end video editing, and other professional workflows.
Key Specs
- Up to 32-core CPU (24 performance cores, 8 efficiency cores)
- Up to 80-core GPU, providing up to 2x faster performance than M2 Ultra
- 32-core Neural Engine optimized for AI and machine learning
- Up to 512 GB unified memory (starting at 96 GB)
- Over 800 GB/s memory bandwidth
- Thunderbolt 5 ports delivering up to 120 Gb/s data transfer speeds
- Support for up to eight Pro Display XDR monitors (over 160 million pixels)
- Dedicated media engines for encoding and decoding:
- H.264
- HEVC
- Four ProRes encode/decode engines capable of 22 simultaneous streams of 8K ProRes 422 video
- Secure Enclave with hardware-verified secure boot
The chip also integrates advanced graphical features such as hardware-accelerated ray tracing and mesh shading for demanding gaming and content creation tasks.
Thunderbolt 5 connectivity offers data transfer speeds of up to 120 Gb/s per port, doubling the previous Thunderbolt 4 speeds, and supports next-generation expansion chassis and multi-system workflows.
The new M3 Ultra will debut in the latest Mac Studio, significantly enhancing performance for tasks like 3D rendering, AI development, and advanced video editing.
