Apple's first 2nm chip is here: What does M6 offer?
What's the story
Apple has unveiled its latest M6 chip for Macs, along with the ultra-powerful M5 Ultra. The new chips are designed to handle demanding tasks like 3D rendering and advanced AI models. The M6 is Apple's first-ever 2nm chip, promising enhanced performance and power efficiency. It also features a Dual 16-core Neural Engine for on-device AI workloads.
Tech specs
M6 chip offers 'world's fastest single-threaded performance'
The M6 chip features a 12-core CPU, an upgrade from the 10 cores in the previous M5 model.
It has two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores.
Apple claims this new CPU delivers "the world's fastest single-threaded performance" and up to 1.2 times faster multithreaded performance than its predecessor.
The chip also comes with a Neural Accelerator on each core and supports up to 32GB of unified memory.
Advanced architecture
M5 Ultra comes with up to 512GB of unified memory
The M5 Ultra chip leverages Apple's UltraFusion interconnect technology to merge two dual-die M5 Max chips into a single quad-die architecture.
This advanced chip comes with an up to 36-core CPU (12 super cores and 24 performance cores), an up to 80-core GPU, and a massive 32-core Neural Engine.
It also supports up to a whopping 512GB of "high-bandwidth" unified memory, which cannot be upgraded after purchase.
Product launch
New Macs powered by the latest chips
The new M6 chip will make its debut in a new Mac Mini, while the ultra-powerful M5 Ultra will be featured in a new Mac Studio.
Both these machines can be pre-ordered from Tuesday onward, with an official release scheduled for September 22.
This marks another major step by Apple into the world of high-performance computing with its own custom silicon chips.