Apple M1 Ultra revealed with UltraFusion architecture, a 20-core CPU and up to a 64-core GPU
Apple has unveiled the M1 Ultra, its latest flagship in-house SoC. As rumours suggested, the M1 Ultra combines two M1 Max chipsets found in the MacBook Pro 14 and MacBook Pro 16. Only available as a desktop processor, the M1 Ultra has a 20-core CPU, up to a 64-core GPU and 800 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Additionally, the M1 Ultra offers a 32-core Neural Engine that can calculate 22 trillion operations per second and 114 billion transistors built on a 5 nm process.
Additionally, Apple will pair the M1 Ultra with 128 GB of unified memory (RAM), double the limitations of M1 Max. Purportedly, Apple has been able to create M1 Ultra thanks to UltraFusion, a custom architecture that allows two M1 Max chips to behave like a single chip. As such, UltraFusion does not require developers to update their apps for M1 Ultra silicon.
To be available in the Mac Studio, Apple claims that the M1 Ultra will achieve better performance than an unnamed 16-core desktop processor at 100 W less power consumption. Similarly, the company asserts that the M1 Ultra GPU will provide performance comparable to the 'highest-end discrete GPU' while consuming 200 W less power. Predictably, Apple has not provided any details about these performance comparisons yet, beyond vague graphs.
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