Apple unveils M2 Ultra chip: 134 billion transistors, up to 24-core CPU+76-core GPU

Apple announces the introduction of the M2 Ultra, marking a quantum leap in performance for the Mac, thus completing the M2 series chipset lineup. Representing Apple’s most potent chip to date, it will empower the all-new Mac Studio and Mac Pro to be the most robust Mac devices.

Like the M1 Ultra, the new M2 Ultra employs UltraFusion technology, linking two M2 Max chips, effectively doubling the performance. UltraFusion uses a silicon interposer to connect the chips, transmitting over 10,000 signals concurrently to realize a low-latency inter-chip bandwidth of up to 2.5TB/s. This technology enables the M2 Ultra to function as a standalone chip to drive all types of software, invoking the M2 Ultra’s supreme performance without the need for code rewriting.

The M2 Ultra incorporates 134 billion transistors, 20 billion more than the M1 Ultra; the unified memory architecture supports a maximum memory capacity of up to 192GB, 50% higher than the M1 Ultra, with a memory bandwidth of up to 800GB/s, double that of the M2 Max; it includes a high 24-core CPU (16 performance cores + 8 efficiency cores), as well as a 60 or 76-core GPU; it is equipped with a 32-core Neural Engine; it houses dedicated hardware acceleration engines for H.264, HEVC, and ProRes encoding and decoding; its display engine supports up to six Pro Display XDR monitors concurrently; and it includes the latest security enclave, along with certified hardware-based secure boot and runtime vulnerability exploitation prevention technologies.

Apple states that the M2 Ultra comes with a more robust central processor, offering a maximum speed increase of up to 20% over the M1 Ultra, a larger memory graphics processor, accelerating by up to 30%, and a neural network engine, with a top speed boost of up to 40%. The media processing engine, in comparison to the M2 Max, doubles in speed, enabling high-speed ProRes video stream processing.

With the release of the Mac Pro equipped with the M2 Ultra, Apple’s transition of the Mac product line to in-house chip designs has now been satisfactorily achieved. This not only transforms the user experience for laptop and desktop computers but also heralds a new era for the Mac product line.