Apple's M3 Ultra Mac Studio may have a 32-core CPU and 80-core GPU
Leaks about Apple's upcoming chipsets and Macs keep pouring in. After reports about the M3, M3 Pro, M3 Mac Mini and the M3 Max, details about the Cupertino company M3 Ultra has surfaced.
Mark Gurman says, in his weekly Power On newsletter, that new logs from third-party app developers reveal information about the top-end version of the Apple Silicon series. But before we get into that, let's discuss the specs of the current Ultra chip.
There were some rumors earlier this year that Apple could discontinue the Mac Studio Ultra, but they turned out to be incorrect when the Silicon Valley mogul announced a new version of the device with in June. In case you missed it, Apple launched a new Mac Studio (pictured above) and Mac Pro, both of which were powered by the M2 Ultra chipset. The 2nd-gen system-on-a-chip is built on a 5 nm process, and is actually a combined version of two M2 Max chips. Diving into the technical details, the M2 Ultra has a 24-core CPU with 16 high-performance cores and 8 high-efficiency cores, and a 76-core GPU. Apple touted that the M2 Ultra's CPU was 20% faster than the M1 Ultra, while the GPU and Neural Engine were 30% and 40% faster respectively, compared to its predecessor.
Apple's M3 Ultra Mac Studio reportedly has a 32-core CPU and 80-core GPU
Let's compare it with the rumored specs of the next-gen SoC. According to Gurman, the M3 Ultra has a 32-core CPU, with 24 high-performance cores, and 8 high-efficiency cores. That's an extra 8 performance cores over those of the M2 version. The M3 Ultra also has a slight edge in the graphics performance with 80-cores for its GPU, which gets a slight bump of 4 additional cores.
If you think about the fact that the base version of M3 has eight CPU cores and 10 GPU cores, and the top-tier model of the M3 Ultra has 4x the number of CPU cores and 16x more GPU cores, it does sound like a fairy tale. The actual difference in the performance between the two line-ups would be staggering.
Apple has been testing new memory options for its MacBook Pro laptops, with 36 GB and 48 GB of RAM. The company is also experimenting with higher memory configurations across its other Mac series. The current Mac Studio has 64 GB of RAM (unified memory) for the base model, we can probably expect the same on the next-gen powerhouse. The Mac Studio M2 Ultra supports up to 192 GB of RAM, it is not clear if the M3 Ultra will support even more. This is based on speculation, but Apple has been cranking up the levels to crazy numbers, so it wouldn't come as a shock if the device does support 256 GB of RAM or more. The upcoming iteration of the high-end chipset is expected to power the next-gen Mac Studio and the Mac Pro. Gurman has reiterated his previous reports to say that the first M3 Macs will be released in October 2023. Those are expected to be a 13-inch MacBook Air, a 13-inch MacBook Pro, and an iMac.
The Bloomberg journalist believes that the M3 Pro and M3 Max Macs will only be launched in 2024. He also suggests that Apple could debut devices with the M3 Ultra at the end of 2024.
