Apple unveils M5 Ultra and M6, its 'most powerful chip ever'

Apple on Tuesday announced two new processors powering its new Mac Mini and Mac Studio models: the M5 Ultra and the M6. The M5 Ultra, which Apple calls its “most powerful chip ever,” fuses two dual-die M5 Max chips into Apple’s first quad-die chip, built to handle heavy AI workloads. It packs an up-to-36-core CPU, an up-to-80-core GPU, and 1.2 TB/s of unified memory bandwidth — 50% more than the M3 Ultra, which Apple released only about a year and a half ago.

While the M5 Ultra targets professionals doing compute-intensive work like complex 3D rendering, visual effects, and running frontier AI models — and will likely also appeal to hobbyist AI developers via the Mac Studio — Apple positions the M6 chip as geared more toward everyday users. “Built using the cutting-edge 2 nm process, M6 combines a new CPU complex, two additional CPU and GPU cores, a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, and more unified memory bandwidth to power through workloads with amazing energy efficiency,” said Apple vice president of Silicon Engineering Sri Santhanam.

The M6’s 12-core CPU complex adds two cores over the M5, and Apple says the chip delivers nearly a 30% increase in peak GPU compute for AI compared with the M5, speeding up prompt processing for on-device large language models. Apple said its developer tools and frameworks automatically optimize performance across the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine, letting developers run and fine-tune large AI models locally on a Mac, whether using Apple’s own Foundation Models or their own proprietary ones.

Apple has trailed competitors on building its own proprietary AI model — its long-awaited Siri upgrade runs on Google’s Gemini — but has built an edge in on-device technology for features like Face ID and Touch ID, which would be a privacy risk if processed in the cloud. That same emphasis on on-device AI workloads could be where Apple has room to differentiate, offering developers a more secure, self-contained environment to build and run AI tools.

Apple’s newest Mac Mini devices are available for preorder now, starting at $899, and will ship after September 22.

Why it matters

The chips show Apple doubling down on on-device AI performance rather than a proprietary frontier model — an area where it could still differentiate on privacy even as its own Siri upgrade runs on Google’s Gemini.