Apple on Wednesday unveiled its updated Mac Studio, which offers M4 Max and M3 Ultra chip options. But why did Apple opt to use an M3 Ultra chip instead of an M4 Ultra? Apple has explained its a decision.
An Apple spokesperson told Ars Technica‘s Andrew Cunningham that Mac users shouldn’t expect an “Ultra” chip in every generation of M-series chips for Macs.
“When asked why the high-end Mac Studio was getting an M3 Ultra chip instead of an M4 Ultra, Apple told us that not every chip generation will get an ‘Ultra’ tier,” Cunningham wrote.
The first three generations of Apple’s “M-series” chips have included an “Ultra” option. The M1 Ultra debuted in March 2022 and the M2 Ultra debuted in June 2023.
We’re expecting to see Apple debut a revamped Mac Pro desktop tower sometime this year, and it was thought that perhaps Apple was holding back the M4 Ultra for that release. An M4 Ultra would help Apple differentiate the Mac Pro from the lower-priced Mac Studio.
However, Apple’s comments indicate the Cupertino firm may skip the M4 Ultra, as it may opt to update its most powerful chips on a lengthier schedule than previous M-series processors.
The M3 Ultra uses UltraFusion technology to join two M3 Max chips with a silicon interposer. This means that everything is doubled, including the CPU cores, GPU cores, Neural Engine cores, and roRes video encoding engines.
The M3 Ultra also supports 120Gbps Thunderbolt 5 and supports up to 512GB of RAM. The chip also supports hardware-accelerated ray-traced graphics.
Numerama has discovered that the M4 Max has no UltraFusion connectors, meaning it would be impossible to create an M4 Ultra without re-engineering it.
Numerama reports that and Apple spokespoerson told it that the company decided to upgrade the Mac Studio now, rather than wait until the next generation.
