Apple’s M3 Ultra chip could have as many as 80 graphics cores, according to a report by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, making what will likely be Apple’s upcoming M3 chip quite powerful.
Apple’s M1 and M2 chip lineups established a pattern, as each generation’s “Ultra” edition effectively offered twice the core count of the chips’ Max versions. Apple basically connected two Max chips with an interconnect to create the M1 Ultra and M2 Ultra chips.
In Sunday’s “Power On” newsletter for Bloomberg, Gurman discussed what could be the M3 Ultra.
Here’s how it played out with the M2: The Pro chip has as many as 12 CPU cores and 19 graphics cores, while the M2 Max tops out at 12 cores for the CPU and 38 for graphics. The M2 Ultra then doubles that to 24 CPU cores and 76 graphics cores.
But Apple deviated a bit from that approach with the new M3 line. The Max version isn’t just an M3 Pro with double the graphics performance; it now has several more CPU cores as well.
That has implications for the M3 Ultra, which Apple hasn’t announced yet. If the company continues to double both the CPU and graphics configurations with the Ultra, we’re looking at a Mac chip that tops out at an outrageous 32 CPU cores and 80 graphics cores. And as Apple steps up the memory, you could imagine an option with 256 gigabytes.
Gurman says the details of the Ultra edition will likely be known within months, and that a launch will occur sometime during 2024.
