Apple has officially announced its latest generation Apple M6 and M5 Ultra Chips with considerable upgrades in processing power, graphics and on-device AI. The M6 features in the new Mac mini while the M5 Ultra is in the current Mac Studio, so Apple can offer a new variety of desktop hardware to consumers, developers and professional users.
The announcement is particularly significant as Apple is moving the focus to performing high-power AI tasks locally on Macs instead of relying on cloud-based computing alone. Both chips are meant to run increasingly complicated AI apps on device. Apple
M6 Is Apple’s First 2 Nanometer Chip
The Apple M6 chip is made using a 2-nanometer process, making it the first semiconductor from the firm to use the technology. It has a 12-core CPU, 12-core GPU and Dual 16-core Neural Engine.
Apple says the M6 provides up to 1.2x greater multithreaded CPU performance than the M5 and up to 2.4x the performance of the M1. The chip also supports up to 32GB of unified memory and bandwidth of up to 170GB/s of unified memory. (Apple)
M6 Aims for Quicker Local AI
AI performance is one of the major upgrades in the M6. The 12-core GPU has Neural Accelerators built into each core, allowing the device to power AI tasks more effectively.
Apple believes the M6 can give up to roughly 30% better peak GPU computation for AI compared with the M5. It also has a Dual 16-core Neural Engine that can deliver up to twice the peak compute performance of prior generations, aiding with on-device language models, agentic AI workloads and other machine-learning applications. Apple
AI and Creative Work: M5 Ultra
Apple believes the M5 Ultra can give up to 4.5x the peak GPU compute for AI compared to the M3 Ultra. The device also features Neural Accelerators across the GPU and a 32-core Neural Engine.
This allows the latest Mac Studio to perform heavy AI tasks locally, even models with hundreds of billions of parameters. The enormous memory capacity may also appeal to AI developers who want to experiment with large models without relying completely on distant computing infrastructure.
Sources
- Apple – Official specs and performance details for the M6 and M5 Ultra.
- Reuters – Covered Apple’s new Mac mini, Mac Studio and focus on AI computing.
- The Verge – M6 and M5 Ultra specs, price and AI performance leak out
- Wired – Apple’s new 2nm M6 and quad-die M5 Ultra architecture explained.
