Apple M6: Why There Will Never Be an M6 Pro
Six months ago I wrote that the age of monolithic Apple Silicon was over. The M5 Pro and M5 Max had arrived as bonded dual-die parts, Fusion Architecture was real, and the direction looked obvious: every tier would go multi-die, generation by generation, the way AMD did it. On August 25th Apple announced the M6. It is a single monolithic die. It also announced the M5 Ultra on the same stage, on…
Six months ago I wrote that the age of monolithic Apple Silicon was over. However, Apple announced the M6, which is a single monolithic die on August 25th. The announcement also introduced the M5 Ultra, built on the same node as the M5 family, using four bonded dies. This means there will be no M6 Pro, M6 Max, or M6 Ultra. Apple has stopped shipping generations and shipped both the base tier M6 and the M5 Ultra on different process nodes.
The M6 is the first silicon on TSMC's N2 node, which is expensive and low yield, making a small monolithic die the only economically sensible choice. On the other hand, the M5 Ultra, with four dies, uses the more mature N3P node, with advanced features and much higher performance. This decision indicates a two-speed lineup, where the base tier stays monolithic for cost-sensitive customers and the top tier gets the new package for high-end users.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
