M3 Ultra: Everything you need to know about most potent Apple silicon

Apple said M3 Ultra-powered Mac Studio can run large language models with over 600 billion parameters directly on-device, leveraging high unified memory capacity of up to 512GB

Apple has introduced the M3 Ultra chip with the latest Mac Studio, calling it its most powerful Apple silicon yet. Featuring the highest number of CPU and GPU cores in a Mac, the M3 Ultra supports up to 512GB of unified memory, the most ever in a personal computer. It also includes a 32-core Neural Engine for advanced on-device AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities.

 

“M3 Ultra is the pinnacle of our scalable system-on-a-chip architecture, aimed specifically at users who run the most heavily threaded and bandwidth-intensive applications,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies.

 

M3 Ultra: Configuration

 

The M3 Ultra is available in two configurations on the new Mac Studio:

• 28-core CPU, 60-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine
• 32-core CPU, 80-core GPU, 32-core Neural Engine

The base model supports up to 256GB of unified memory and 16TB SSD storage, while the higher variant offers up to 512GB of unified memory with the same storage options.

 

M3 Ultra: Architecture

 

Apple stated that the M3 Ultra is built using its UltraFusion packaging technology, which links two M3 Max dies with over 10,000 high-speed connections, ensuring low latency and high bandwidth. This design enables the system to recognise the combined dies as a single unified chip, significantly enhancing performance. According to Apple, the M3 Ultra integrates 184 billion transistors.

M3 Ultra: Performance and AI

 

Apple claims the M3 Ultra delivers the highest performance of any Apple silicon to date:

• The 32-core CPU is 1.5x faster than the M2 Ultra and 1.8x faster than the M1 Ultra.
• The 80-core GPU is 2x faster than M2 Ultra and 2.6x faster than M1 Ultra, with support for dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and ray tracing for content creation and gaming.
• The 32-core Neural Engine powers Apple Intelligence features and enhances on-device AI performance.

The company also said that the M3 Ultra-powered Mac Studio can run large language models (LLMs) with over 600 billion parameters directly on-device, leveraging its high unified memory capacity and high memory bandwidth of over 800GB per second.

 

M3 Ultra: Connectivity

 

The M3 Ultra chip introduces Thunderbolt 5 support to the Mac Studio, offering more than twice the transfer speeds of Thunderbolt 4. Apple stated that each Thunderbolt 5 port is backed by its own dedicated controller, ensuring consistent high-bandwidth performance across all ports.

 

Thunderbolt 5 enables faster data transfers for external storage, docking stations, and hub solutions. It also allows for the interconnection of multiple Mac Studio systems.

 

M3 Ultra: Additional features

• Hardware-accelerated H.264, HEVC, and ProRes encode/decode engines, enabling playback of up to 22 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video.
• The display engine supports up to eight Apple Pro Display XDRs, driving over 160 million pixels.