Apple Introduces the M1 Ultra, the Company's Most Powerful Chip to Date

Essentially, It's two M1 Max Chips Joined Together

Apple revealed M1 Ultra today, the company's next important step for Apple silicon and the Mac, which it claims would bring higher computational capability to the new Mac Studio. The business also claims that this is its most powerful processor yet, and that it will maintain the company's high-end performance per watt. The M1 Ultra includes Apple's UltraFusion packaging architecture, which links the die of two M1 Max processors to create a System on a Chip (SoC) with exceptional performance and capabilities. The new SoC, according to the company, has 114 billion transistors, the largest ever seen in a personal computer processor.

The M1 Ultra can also be configured with up to 128GB of high-bandwidth, low-latency unified memory, which the 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU, and 32-core Neural Engine can access.

Developers generating code, artists working in massive 3D worlds that were previously impossible to render, and film experts can transcode video to ProRes up to 5.6x faster than with a 28-core Mac Pro with Afterburner, according to Apple.

Apple's M1 Chip, the first "Apple Silicon" technology, revolutionized the computing industry by transforming the MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and other PCs into portable powerhouses. Last year, the business released the M1 Pro and M1 Max, which gave the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros even more performance. Apple is now adding a new member to the M1 Ultra family.

The M1 Ultra is essentially two M1 Max chips combined, making it even more suitable for demanding creative applications such as video editing and 3D rendering. Apple unveiled a secret feature in the M1 Max processors during its launch event today: a die-to-die connector called "UltraFusion" that allows it to connect many chips. It's similar to AMD's Infinity Fabric in terms of concept, which ensures fast communication between the CPU, GPU, and other components.

According to Apple, the UltraFusion interconnect can handle up to 2.5 terabytes per second of bandwidth, so there should be no performance issues between the two M1 Max dies. The M1 Ultra has 114 billion transistors in total and can accommodate up to 128GB of unified memory with 800 GB/s bandwidth. The Ultra contains a 20-core CPU (16 high performance and 4 high efficiency cores) and a 64-core GPU, as you'd expect when two M1 Max CPUs are sandwiched together. The manufacturer says that it is up to 8 times faster than the original M1 chip in terms of graphics.

Apple didn't have to worry about battery life because the M1 Ultra will be featured in the company's new Mac Studio mini-desktop. Nonetheless, Apple claims that the Ultra is more energy efficient than the competition, using up to 65 % less power than a 10-core x86 processor. Apple didn't say whose CPU the M1 Ultra was compared to, but the figures make sense given what we've seen from the M1 Max thus far.