Apple debuts its ‘most powerful chip ever’ in M5 Ultra and M6

Apple unveiled two new processors on Tuesday, featuring the M5 Ultra and M6 chips in its latest Mac Mini and Mac Studio models. Apple claims the M5 Ultra is its "most powerful chip ever," as it combines two dual-die M5 Max chips into a quad-die design, making it ideal for heavy AI workloads. The chip boasts a CPU with up to 36 cores, a GPU with up to 80 cores, and 1.2 TB/s of unified memory bandwidth - 50% more than the previous M3 Ultra released around a year and a half ago.

The M5 Ultra is tailored for professionals engaged in CPU-intensive tasks such as 3D rendering, visual effects, and running large AI models. However, Apple's M6 chip is aimed at everyday users. Using a 2 nm process, the M6 combines an enhanced CPU complex, two extra CPU and GPU cores, a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, and increased unified memory bandwidth, enabling it to handle workloads with impressive energy efficiency.

Sri Santhanam, Apple's vice president of Silicon Engineering, explained that the M6 chip's 12-core CPU complex delivers nearly a 30% boost in GPU compute for AI compared to the M5, enhancing the speed of on-device Large Language Model (LLM) processing.

Apple emphasizes that developers can now run and fine-tune large AI models locally on their Mac, leveraging Apple's developer tools and frameworks to automatically optimize performance across the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine. This enables the use of Apple Foundation Models, App Intents to access Apple Intelligence features, and personalized AI models, allowing developers to build and execute powerful AI workloads entirely on-device.

While Apple has been behind its competitors in developing proprietary AI models, the upcoming Siri upgrade, powered by Google's Gemini, could potentially change this. Apple's focus on on-device AI workloads could be where it differentiates itself, offering developers a more secure and controlled environment for experimenting with new AI tools.