What is M3 Ultra? Learn about Apple’s new silicone

Apple has officially introduced the M3 Ultra, its most powerful chip yet, alongside the latest Mac Studio. The new chip builds on the foundation of the M3, promising better efficiency and performance for demanding workflows. With the Mac Studio’s compact design tailored for creators, the addition of the M3 Ultra aims to push the limits of video editing, 3D rendering, and other intensive tasks. This launch reinforces Apple’s focus on high-performance computing in a form factor designed for professionals.

Improved performance and efficiency

The M3 Ultra pushes Mac performance further while maintaining the power efficiency Apple silicon is known for. It comes with a 32-core CPU, including 24 performance cores and eight efficiency cores, delivering significant speed gains—up to 1.5 times faster than the M2 Ultra and 1.8 times faster than the M1 Ultra. The chip also features Apple’s largest 80-core GPU, offering up to twice the graphics performance of the M2 Ultra and 2.6 times that of the M1 Ultra.The M3 Ultra introduces an advanced graphics architecture with dynamic caching, hardware-accelerated mesh shading, and ray tracing, enhancing both content creation and gaming performance. A 32-core Neural Engine accelerates AI and machine learning tasks, powering Apple Intelligence, the company’s new generative AI system. With over 800GB/s of memory bandwidth and dedicated ML accelerators, the Mac Studio with M3 Ultra is capable of running large language models (LLMs) with more than 600 billion parameters directly on the device—positioning it as a powerful tool for AI developers and creative professionals alike.

Expanded Memory

The M3 Ultra features a unified memory architecture designed for high bandwidth and low latency, making it one of the most advanced memory systems in a personal computer. With a base configuration of 96GB and the option to expand up to 512GB, it surpasses the memory capacity of many high-end workstation GPUs. This allows professionals working with 3D rendering, visual effects, and AI to handle massive datasets and complex workflows without the usual memory constraints.

Thunderbolt 5

The M3 Ultra introduces Thunderbolt 5 to the Mac Studio, delivering data transfer speeds of up to 120 Gb/s—more than twice the speed of Thunderbolt 4. Each Thunderbolt 5 port is powered by a dedicated, custom-designed controller on the chip, ensuring consistent high-speed performance across all connections.

For professionals working with high-speed storage, docking stations, and expansion hubs, this upgrade significantly improves workflow efficiency. Thunderbolt 5 also allows multiple Mac Studio systems to be linked together, opening new possibilities for large-scale content creation and computational research.

We will also soon do a comparison with M4 and M3 Ultra for users, stay tuned.