Overview
- Apple announced the M5 Ultra and M6 on Tuesday and opened reservations the same day for a refreshed Mac Studio that will ship and reach Apple retail stores from Sept. 22.
- The M5 Ultra is designed as Apple’s most powerful chip to date with a CPU of up to 36 cores, an up-to-80-core GPU that places a Neural Accelerator on each core, a 32-core Neural Engine, and up to 512 GB of unified memory linked at about 1.2 TB/s using Apple’s UltraFusion multi‑die interconnect.
- Apple presented the M6 as its first 2‑nanometer chip with a 12‑core CPU, a 12‑core GPU with per‑core Neural Accelerators, a dual 16‑core Neural Engine, and up to 32 GB of unified memory aimed at better energy efficiency and on‑device AI in the Mac mini.
- Apple published pricing and timing for the Mac Studio—starting at €3,029 for the M5 Max and €6,649 for the M5 Ultra—and said the highest 512 GB unified memory Mac Studio configuration ships later, while reports from Bloomberg indicate a renewed Mac mini tested with M5 and M6 chips may be announced in the coming days.
- Journalists reporting on supply note memory‑chip shortages have strained current Mac mini stock, which could limit short‑term availability and affect customers who want systems capable of running large AI models locally as Apple pushes larger unified memory and on‑device model support.