Apple's new M6 chip gets more cores and more AI compute

Apple has announced the M6 chip for its Mac lineup, along with the M5 Ultra, which the company describes as its most powerful chip ever. The new silicon is aimed at demanding tasks such as 3D rendering and running frontier AI models. The M6 will be available in a new Mac Mini, while the M5 Ultra is set to power an upgraded Mac Studio. Both computers will be available for preorder starting Tuesday, with a release scheduled for September 22nd.

The M6 is Apple’s first chip built on a 2nm manufacturing process, a shift the company says will deliver gains in both performance and power efficiency. It also features a Dual 16-core Neural Engine designed for on-device AI workloads. The chip includes a 12-core CPU, up from 10 cores in the M5, with two super cores, four performance cores, and six efficiency cores. Apple says the CPU offers the world’s fastest single-threaded performance and up to 1.2 times faster multithreaded performance compared to the M5.

The M6 also upgrades the GPU to 12 cores, up from 10 in the previous generation, and each core includes a Neural Accelerator. It supports up to 32GB of unified memory. The M5 Ultra, by contrast, uses Apple’s UltraFusion interconnect technology to combine two dual-die M5 Max chips into a single quad-die architecture. It offers an up to 36-core CPU with 12 super cores and 24 performance cores, an up to 80-core GPU, and a 32-core Neural Engine.

The M5 Ultra supports up to 512GB of high-bandwidth unified memory, which, as with other M-series chips, cannot be upgraded after purchase. The M6’s core configuration marks a continuation of Apple’s newer core naming scheme, which introduced a distinct type of performance core starting with the M5 Pro and M5 Max. Previously, the company used the term super core to refer to performance cores. The new M6 and M5 Ultra chips target different segments, with the M6 aimed at the Mac Mini and the M5 Ultra focused on the Mac Studio. U.S. consumers will be able to order both machines ahead of the late-September launch.

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