Apple today announced the M5 Ultra, positioning it as the most powerful chip ever built into a Mac. The processor utilizes a groundbreaking quad-die architecture, connecting two dual-die M5 Max chips via next-generation UltraFusion technology. This design increases inter-die bandwidth to over 4.4TB/s and connection density by more than 6x, allowing the four dies to function as a single processor.

The M5 Ultra features a CPU with up to 36 cores—12 super cores and 24 performance cores—delivering up to 1.25x higher single-threaded and 1.3x higher multithreaded performance than the M3 Ultra. Its GPU scales up to 80 cores, incorporating a Neural Accelerator for the first time on an Ultra chip, which Apple claims delivers 4.3x the peak AI compute performance. A 32-core Neural Engine and an enhanced Media Engine support up to 33 streams of 8K ProRes 422 at 30 fps.

The chip supports up to 512GB of unified memory with 1.2TB/s of bandwidth, a 50% increase over the M3 Ultra. This configuration enables users to run large language models with hundreds of billions of parameters entirely on device. The M5 Ultra is exclusively available in the new Mac Studio, available for pre-order today with shipping beginning September 22.