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Apple Unveils M2 Ultra – Faster CPU and GPU, Support for More Unified Memory

Apple held its Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address earlier today, and during the event, the Cupertino firm announced its new M2 Ultra system on a chip (SoC). The M2 Ultra delivers huge performance increases to the Mac.

M2 Ultra uses a second-generation 5-nanometer fabrication process and uses Apple’s UltraFusion technology to connect two M2 Max chips, providing double the performance. M2 Ultra boasts 134 billion transistors — 20 billion more than M1 Ultra. The M2 Max’s unified memory architecture supports up to 192GB of memory capacity, which is 50% more than M1 Ultra, and features 800GB/s of memory bandwidth — twice that of M2 Max.

M2 Ultra’s CPU is 20% faster than M1 Ultra, and has a larger GPU that’s up to 30% faster, and a Neural Engine that’s up to 40% faster. It also boasts a media engine with twice the capabilities of M2 Max.

“M2 Ultra delivers astonishing performance and capabilities for our pro users’ most demanding workflows, while maintaining Apple silicon’s industry-leading power efficiency,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. “With huge performance gains in the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine, combined with massive memory bandwidth in a single SoC, M2 Ultra is the world’s most powerful chip ever created for a personal computer.”

M2 Ultra is built by connecting two M2 Max dies through UltraFusion, Apple’s custom-built packaging technology. UltraFusion uses a silicon interposer that connects the dies with more than 10,000 signals, providing over 2.5TB/s of low-latency interprocessor bandwidth.

Apple’s UltraFusion architecture allows the M2 Ultra to appear as a single chip to software, allowing code to take full advantage of M2 Ultra without the code being rewritten.

M2 Ultra features 800GB/s of system memory bandwidth and it can be configured with up to 192GB of unified memory.

M2 Ultra integrates Apple’s latest custom technologies right on the chip, maximizing performance and efficiency:

  • M2 Ultra features a 32-core Neural Engine, delivering 31.6 trillion operations per second, which is 40 percent faster performance than M1 Ultra.
  • The powerful media engine has twice the capabilities of M2 Max, further accelerating video processing. It has dedicated, hardware-enabled H.264, HEVC, and ProRes encode and decode, allowing M2 Ultra to play back up to 22 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video — far more than any PC chip can do.
  • The display engine supports up to six Pro Display XDRs, driving more than 100 million pixels.
  • The latest Secure Enclave, along with hardware-verified secure boot and runtime anti-exploitation technologies, provides best-in-class security.

The M2 Ultra power the new Mac Pro, making the Mac transition to Apple silicon complete.

For more information about the M2 Ultra, visit the Apple website.

Chris Hauk

Chris is a Senior Editor at Mactrast. He lives somewhere in the deep Southern part of America, and yes, he has to pump in both sunshine and the Internet.