Apple's M3 Ultra unlocks next-level power for AI, graphics & 3D rendering

Apple M3 Ultra: peak performance, AI empowerment, efficiency is king

The Apple M3 Ultra chip is Apple's most powerful chip to date, combining speed, advanced AI capabilities and high efficiency. The following is a detailed interpretation.

M3 Ultra uses Apple's UltraFusion architecture to connect two M3 Max chip units together through more than 10,000 high-speed connections. This design enables the chip to operate as a unit, providing excellent performance while maintaining energy efficiency.

The M3 Ultra is equipped with a 32-core CPU, an 80-core GPU and a double-network engine core designed to handle demanding tasks.

According to Apple, the chip has 1.5 times the performance of the M2 Ultra and 2.6 times the performance of the M1 Ultra. With dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing, the new GPU is ideal for graphics-intensive tasks such as 3D rendering and gaming. Of course, the final performance still needs actual testing and verification, and the benchmark test results are expected to be announced within one week.

AI is ready, massive memory is blessed

Like other recently launched chips from Apple, the M3 Ultra also took artificial intelligence into consideration at the beginning of its design. Its 32-core neural network engine accelerates machine learning and AI workloads, enabling it to run large language models with over 600 billion parameters directly on Mac.

The chip also supports up to 512GB of unified memory, which exceeds the capacity of the workstation graphics card. This eliminates work bottlenecks for AI development, video editing, and high-end 3D modeling professionals.

Thunderbolt 5 and advanced connectivity

With the launch of Thunderbolt 5, the M3 Ultra's data transfer speed is as high as 120 gigabits per second, more than twice the bandwidth of Thunderbolt 4. Each Thunderbolt 5 port is supported by a custom controller, ensuring dedicated bandwidth for high-performance workflows.

Each Thunderbolt 5 port on Mac Studio is directly supported by a dedicated custom controller on the M3 Ultra. Image copyright: Apple

With Thunderbolt 5, Mac Studio is competent for high-performance workflows, allowing professionals to easily move massive files and drive external monitors.

Built-in security and energy efficiency

Apple continues to emphasize security in the M3 Ultra, equipped with advanced security partitions and hardware-verified secure boot. The chip also integrates a dedicated video encoding engine that can support multiple 8K ProRes video streams simultaneously.

Despite its powerful capabilities, the M3 Ultra still maintains Apple's energy efficiency standards. The company aims to achieve carbon neutrality across its entire business by 2030, and the energy-efficient design of the M3 Ultra helps reduce the overall environmental impact of Apple devices.

Apple M3 Ultra sets a new benchmark for personal computing and provides extremely high performance for AI, creative workflows, and high bandwidth tasks. With its advanced architecture, massive memory support and Thunderbolt 5, it further consolidates Apple's silicon chips' leading position in desktop computing.

Apple Continuous Innovation

The Apple M2 Ultra, launched in June 2023, represents a significant advancement in the company's silicon chip lineup. The M2 Ultra is built using TSMC's 5nm process process, equipped with a 24-core CPU (including 16 performance cores and 8 energy efficiency cores) and a GPU that can be configured up to 76-core.

M2 Ultra also includes a 32-core neural network engine that can perform 31.6 trillion operations per second, and its performance is 40% faster than its predecessor M1 Ultra.

Looking forward, Apple has not officially announced the M4 Ultra yet, but the M4 chip is expected to appear in future Mac products later in 2025. If Apple follows its usual pattern, the M4 Ultra could be launched in 2026, when it will be equipped with a more advanced neural network engine, higher efficiency, and possibly support faster device-side AI models.

Apple may also differentiate between its expected Mac Pro and Mac Studio. If the M4 Ultra is available only on Mac Pro, that will prompt buyers to choose Mac Pro, not just for the PCI-E interface.

With the M3 Ultra, Apple has consolidated its leadership in workstation-level computing, laying the foundation for future development. The M4 Ultra will bring another leap in AI performance and will have higher energy efficiency.

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