Apple M7 Ultra tipped for massive unified memory upgrade

While the base Apple M6 is expected to debut later this year alongside a new MacBook variant, the Apple M6 Pro, M6 Max, and M6 Ultra are reportedly no longer part of Apple's roadmap. Instead, Apple's next high-performance chips are said to arrive as part of the M7 family. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has now shared another interesting detail about the flagship Apple M7 Ultra.

According to Gurman, the Apple M7 Ultra will support up to 1.5 TB of unified memory. That is three times the 512 GB maximum supported by the M3 Ultra-the highest memory capacity offered by any Apple Silicon chip to date. Gurman also claims the Apple M5 Ultra will support roughly half that amount, or about 768 GB, upon its eventual launch.

Although the M7 Ultra may technically support up to 1.5 TB of unified memory, it remains unclear whether Apple will actually offer such a configuration. The company previously discontinued the 512 GB configuration of the M3 Ultra-powered Mac Studio despite the processor supporting it. Gurman previously reported that the next Mac Studio equipped with the M7 Ultra is expected to launch in early 2028 with a better cooling system.

If accurate, the increased memory ceiling would represent Apple's biggest leap in unified memory capacity to date. Assuming Apple also expands the CPU and GPU resources available on the M7 Ultra, the chip could compete more directly with AMD's upcoming Medusa Halo and Intel's Nova Lake-AX processors in the high-end workstation segment. At the very top end, Apple's flagship SoC may also find itself vying for workloads traditionally handled by entry-level AMD Epyc, Intel Xeon and Qualcomm Dragonfly C1000 processors, particularly as AI and memory-intensive applications become increasingly common.

While the base Apple M7 is rumored to be manufactured on Intel's 18A-P process, the flagship M7 Ultra is expected to stay with TSMC. Considering its expected 2028 debut, the chip will likely be built on a member of TSMC's N2 family, although the exact process node remains unknown.