Apple has at the WWDC 2023 unveiled the M2 Ultra, its most powerful silicon chip yet. This chip will feature in Apple’s desktop computer, the Mac Studio. The M2 Ultra and M2 Max were launched earlier this year.
Succeeding the M1 Ultra is the M2 Ultra, and if the former was considered powerful and fast, the M2 Ultra is so much more. While the M1 Ultra featured 20 CPU cores, 64 GPU cores, 32 Neural Engines cores, 128 GB of unified memory, the M2 Ultra is coming with
- 24 CPU cores
- Up to 76 GPU cores
- 32 – core Neural Engine
and supports up to 192GB of unified memory backed by 800GB/s of memory bandwidth.
Built using 5nm technology and featuring 134 billion transistors, the new M2 Ultra’s CPU performance is up to 20% faster compared to the M1 Ultra’s.
Its GPU performance is up to 30% more and the Neural Engine is 40% faster than that of the M1 Ultra.
The M2 Ultra CPU consists of 16 next-gen high performance cores and 8 high efficiency cores.
According to Apple, the M2 Ultra has enough power to train and run a large language model without a dedicated GPU and it will also be able to support up to six Pro Display XDRs – that’s more than 100 million pixels.
Johnny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies declared the M2 Ultra “the world’s most powerful chip ever created for a personal computer.”
“M2 Ultra delivers astonishing performance and capabilities for our pro users’ most demanding workflows, while maintaining Apple silicon’s industry-leading power efficiency,” said Srouji. “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,” he added.
The new Mac Studio will be available from June 13 and starts retailing at $1,999.