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Apple Unveils M1 Ultra, the World's Most Powerful Chip For a Personal Computer

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Apple today announced M1 Ultra, the next giant leap for Apple silicon and the Mac. Featuring UltraFusion — Apple's innovative packaging architecture that interconnects the die of two M1 Max chips to create a system on a chip (SoC) with unprecedented levels of performance and capabilities — M1 Ultra delivers breathtaking computing power to the new Mac Studio while maintaining industry-leading performance per watt.

The new SoC consists of 114 billion transistors, the most ever in a personal computer chip. M1 Ultra can be configured with up to 128 GB of high-bandwidth, low-latency unified memory that can be accessed by the 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU and 32-core Neural Engine, providing astonishing performance for developers compiling code, artists working in huge 3D environments that were previously impossible to render, and video professionals who can transcode video to ProRes up to 5.6x faster than with a 28-core Mac Pro with Afterburner.





"M1 Ultra is another game changer for Apple silicon that once again will shock the PC industry. By connecting two M1 Max die with our UltraFusion packaging architecture, we're able to scale Apple silicon to unprecedented new heights," said Johny Srouji, Apple's senior vice president of Hardware Technologies. "With its powerful CPU, massive GPU, incredible Neural Engine, ProRes hardware acceleration and huge amount of unified memory, M1 Ultra completes the M1 family as the world's most powerful and capable chip for a personal computer."

Groundbreaking UltraFusion Architecture

The foundation for M1 Ultra is the extremely powerful and power-efficient M1 Max. To build M1 Ultra, the die of two M1 Max are connected using UltraFusion, Apple's custom-built packaging architecture. The most common way to scale performance is to connect two chips through a motherboard, which typically brings significant trade-offs, including increased latency, reduced bandwidth and increased power consumption. However, Apple's innovative UltraFusion uses a silicon interposer that connects the chips across more than 10,000 signals, providing a massive 2.5 TB/s of low-latency, inter-processor bandwidth — more than 4x the bandwidth of the leading multi-chip interconnect technology. This enables M1 Ultra to behave and be recognised by software as one chip, so developers don't need to rewrite code to take advantage of its performance. There's never been anything like it.

Unprecedented Performance and Power Efficiency

M1 Ultra features an extraordinarily powerful 20-core CPU with 16 high-performance cores and four high-efficiency cores. It delivers 90 per cent higher multithreaded performance than the fastest available 16-core PC desktop chip in the same power envelope. Additionally, M1 Ultra reaches the PC chip's peak performance using 100 fewer watts. That astounding efficiency means less energy is consumed and fans run quietly, even as apps like Logic Pro rip through demanding workflows, such as processing massive amounts of virtual instruments, audio plug-ins and effects.

For the most graphics-intensive needs, like 3D rendering and complex image processing, M1 Ultra has a 64-core GPU — 8x the size of M1 — delivering faster performance than even the highest-end PC GPU available while using 200 fewer watts of power.

Apple's unified memory architecture has also scaled up with M1 Ultra. Memory bandwidth is increased to 800 GB/s, more than 10x the latest PC desktop chip, and M1 Ultra can be configured with 128 GB of unified memory. Compared with the most powerful PC graphics cards that max out at 48 GB, nothing comes close to M1 Ultra for graphics memory to support enormous GPU-intensive workloads like working with extreme 3D geometry and rendering massive scenes.

The 32-core Neural Engine in M1 Ultra runs up to 22 trillion operations per second, speeding through the most challenging machine learning tasks. And, with double the media engine capabilities of M1 Max, M1 Ultra offers unprecedented ProRes video encode and decode throughput. In fact, the new Mac Studio with M1 Ultra can play back up to 18 streams of 8K ProRes 422 video — a feat no other chip can accomplish. M1 Ultra also integrates custom Apple technologies, such as a display engine capable of driving multiple external displays, integrated Thunderbolt 4 controllers and best-in-class security, including Apple's latest Secure Enclave, hardware-verified secure boot and runtime anti-exploitation technologies.

macOS and Apps Scale Up to M1 Ultra

Deep integration between hardware and software has always been at the heart of the Mac experience. macOS Monterey has been designed for Apple silicon, taking advantage of M1 Ultra's huge increases in CPU, GPU and memory bandwidth. Developer technologies like Metal let apps take full advantage of the new chip, and optimisations in Core ML utilise the new 32-core Neural Engine, so machine learning models run faster than ever.

Users have access to the largest collection of apps ever for Mac, including iPhone and iPad apps that can now run on Mac, and Universal apps that unlock the full power of the M1 family of chips. Apps that have not yet been updated to Universal will run seamlessly with Apple's Rosetta 2 technology.

Another Leap Forward in the Transition to Apple Silicon

Apple has introduced Apple silicon to nearly every Mac in the current line-up, and each new chip — M1, M1 Pro, M1 Max and now M1 Ultra — unleashes amazing capabilities for the Mac. M1 Ultra completes the M1 family of chips, powering the all-new Mac Studio, a high-performance desktop system with a re-imagined compact design made possible by the industry-leading performance per watt of Apple silicon.

Apple Silicon and the Environment

The energy efficiency of Apple's custom silicon helps Mac Studio use less power over its lifetime. In fact, while delivering extraordinary performance, Mac Studio consumes up to 1,000 kilowatt-hours less energy than that of a high-end PC desktop over the course of a year.

Today, Apple is carbon-neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to have net-zero climate impact across the entire business, which includes manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles. This means that every chip Apple creates, from design to manufacturing, will be 100 per cent carbon-neutral.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
 
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How much $$ there apple??
 
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How much $$ there apple??

Cheapest configuration 4.629 EUROS, Most expensive configuration M1 Ultra with 64 gpu-cores, 128GB ram and 8TB-ssd, it's yours at 9.229 EUROS.
 
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who need this raw power ? who still cares if he convert vido instead of 10 min to 1 min ?????? but nice to see the flexibelity :)
 
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Cheapest configuration 4.629 EUROS, Most expensive configuration M1 Ultra with 64 gpu-cores, 128GB ram and 8TB-ssd, it's yours at 9.229 EUROS.
So 300% more than an equivalent PC then?
 
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A lot of performance claims that if true are amazing.
But the GPU one got me, I’m sure it will play candy crush great, and some ports, but this is going to push Mac gaming back to the stone ages again.
 
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A lot of performance claims that if true are amazing.
But the GPU one got me, I’m sure it will play candy crush great, and some ports, but this is going to push Mac gaming back to the stone ages again.

Wha? It's literally the same GPU cores they already ship, but now you have twice as many. What part of that is "going to push Mac gaming back to the stone ages"?
 
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Go look at how much TR PRO and Xeon W workstations with dGPUs cost. It's pretty comparable.
But they are comparing this with a desktop 16 core CPU not TR Pro or Xeon W as you mention, this is a workstation class CPU/SOC, so for a comparable cost, and higher power consumption I would imagine both would still likely beat it hands down in many workstation use-case scenarios
 
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Wha? It's literally the same GPU cores they already ship, but now you have twice as many. What part of that is "going to push Mac gaming back to the stone ages"?

The exhaustive list of triple A Arm coded titles maybe? Rosetta testing on M1 chips shows that the half size of this is slower than a 6800 or 3070 mobile, so slapping 2 more on and bumping the bandwidth puts it smack in the middle of a desktop APU that costs a tenth and doesn’t need Rosetta overhead.
 
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But they are comparing this with a desktop 16 core CPU not TR Pro or Xeon W
Incorrect. They compared it to the 16-core Xeon W-3245 and 28-core Xeon W-3275M that both ship in the Mac Pro. The only 'desktop' chip they compared to was the 10-core i9-10910 in the 27" iMac. The whole point of M1 Ultra was to offer a replacement for the Xeon Ws that are in the outgoing models.

The exhaustive list of triple A Arm coded titles maybe? Rosetta testing on M1 chips shows that the half size of this is slower than a 6800 or 3070 mobile, so slapping 2 more on and bumping the bandwidth puts it smack in the middle of a desktop APU that costs a tenth and doesn’t need Rosetta overhead.

None of that is unique to this launch, then. You're just repeating the same thing two years later as if it's somehow just now a problem. Doubling the core counts increases performance, which is the exact opposite of pushing performance back to the stone age. Also for what it's worth, Parallels runs Win11 ARM pretty damn well, and they have a DX to Metal transaction layer that works for a wide swath of DX11 games.
 
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Incorrect. They compared it to the 16-core Xeon W-3245 and 28-core Xeon W-3275M that both ship in the Mac Pro. The only 'desktop' chip they compared to was the 10-core i9-10910 in the 27" iMac. The whole point of M1 Ultra was to offer a replacement for the Xeon Ws that are in the outgoing models.



None of that is unique to this launch, then. You're just repeating the same thing two years later as if it's somehow just now a problem. Doubling the core counts increases performance, which is the exact opposite of pushing performance back to the stone age. Also for what it's worth, Parallels runs Win11 ARM pretty damn well, and they have a DX to Metal transaction layer that works for a wide swath of DX11 games.
It delivers 90 per cent higher multithreaded performance than the fastest available 16-core PC desktop chip in the same power envelope
Point being like I said it is an ultra high end workstation SOC that is likely comparable to high end TR/Xeon WS in cost, comparing it to a 16c desktop CPU that likely costs 3-4x less is not all that impressive IMO
 
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Point being like I said it is an ultra high end workstation SOC that is likely comparable to high end TR/Xeon WS in cost, comparing it to a 16c desktop CPU that likely costs 3-4x less is not all that impressive IMO
1646779804436.png


Go to the source material my dude. Or go watch the event footage where they tell you exactly what they tested. It's generally a good idea to have all the information before trying to argue.
 
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So go read the fine print? :roll: true though I guess.. and I'm not "arguing" jees every disagreement has to be an argument on the internet, I was responding to the information on the article posted, next time I will look on Wikipedia, cross reference that with 20 other credible sources and industry insiders before daring to comment :eek:
 
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Need to see independent reviews and testing before making a judgment. It is clearly aimed at the video editing market but let's see how it runs (on emulation in some instances I'm sure).
 
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:thinking:
this isn't x86, so this isn't a PC ...
Ya I was wondering about that. Will Autocad, solidworks, Matlab, etc. etc. run on this??
 
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Apple Unveils M1 Ultra, the World's Most Powerful Chip For a Personal Computer​

I know this is a press release, but I call bullshiot. That is so unlikely as to be pure fantasy. @ Apple/Tim Cook, what drugs are you on to make such a claim thinking that any reasonable person would believe you?

EDIT; Now if they had claimed that it's the world's most powerful SOC, they'd have some merit. But what they've claimed is a blatant lie. Intel and AMD both have much more powerful CPU's.

Probably the cost of a car
Likely more. They're making the claim. Regardless of how truthful it is or isn't, they're going to charge the premium price.
 
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