Apple has announced two major additions to its Mac lineup: the M6 chip, debuting in a new Mac mini, and the M5 Ultra, debuting alongside the M5 Max in a refreshed Mac Studio. According to Apple's Sri Santhanam, the chips represent 'the next giant leap in performance and AI compute for Apple silicon.' The Mac Studio is available for pre-order starting August 25, with units arriving September 22, while the 512GB unified memory configuration is expected in late October.
M6 is Apple's first chip built on a 2-nanometer process and features a 12-core CPU (2 super cores, 4 performance cores, 6 efficiency cores), a 12-core GPU with Neural Accelerators in each core, a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, and up to 170 GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, supporting up to 32GB of unified memory. Apple says M6 delivers the world's fastest single-threaded CPU performance, up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance than M5, and nearly 30 percent more peak GPU AI compute than M5. The chip also brings updated graphics features including hardware-accelerated ray tracing and Dynamic Caching.
The Mac Studio refresh includes both M5 Max and the all-new M5 Ultra. M5 Max features an 18-core CPU (6 super cores, 12 performance cores), an up-to-40-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, up to 128GB of unified memory, and up to 614 GB/s of memory bandwidth. Apple claims up to 3.9x faster AI performance than the prior generation for M5 Max, along with gains including up to 10.7x faster LLM prompt processing and up to 7.4x faster text-to-image performance compared to M1 Max.
M5 Ultra, described by Apple as its most powerful chip yet, uses UltraFusion technology to join two M5 Max dies into a quad-die architecture for the first time in an M-series chip, with inter-die bandwidth exceeding 4.4 TB/s. It features an up-to-36-core CPU (12 super cores, 24 performance cores), an up-to-80-core GPU, a 32-core Neural Engine, up to 512GB of unified memory, and 1.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth—50 percent higher than M3 Ultra. Sources report consistent performance figures: up to 1.25x (25 percent) higher single-threaded and 1.3x (30 percent) higher multithreaded CPU performance versus M3 Ultra, up to 4.3x the peak AI compute of M3 Ultra, and up to 1.8x faster graphics than the prior generation. The Media Engine can play up to 33 streams of 8K ProRes 422 at 30 fps.
The new Mac Studio also introduces PCIe Gen 6 storage offering up to twice the speed of the previous model, Thunderbolt 5 ports with up to 120 Gb/s bandwidth, and the Apple-designed N1 chip bringing Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 to Mac Studio for the first time. Multiple Mac Studio units can be clustered over Thunderbolt 5 using RDMA, with a four-system cluster delivering up to 3x faster distributed AI inference than a single machine. The system supports up to eight displays, or up to four Studio Display XDR units at full 5K resolution and 120Hz, and includes genlock support over USB-C for syncing with cameras like the iPhone 17 Pro.
Pricing starts at $2,499 ($2,299 for education) for Mac Studio with M5 Max, and $5,499 ($5,099 for education) for M5 Ultra. The new Mac Studio ships with macOS 27 Golden Gate, featuring Siri AI and expanded Apple Intelligence capabilities, and Apple notes the device is built with 35 percent recycled content overall, including 100 percent recycled aluminum in its enclosure, as part of its broader sustainability goals.