Apple is reportedly working on a successor to its already powerful M2 Ultra chip, which it announced earlier this year at WWDC 2023. The current M2 Ultra chip, which is inside the current Mac Studio and Mac Pro desktops, merges the die of two M2 Max chips into one. You can get a Mac Studio or Mac Pro with the M2 Ultra now, which has 24 CPU cores, and up to 76 GPU cores right now.
However, Bloomberg’s Apple expert Mark Guman, in his weekly Power On newsletter, reports that going though developer logs, he’s found that the M3 Ultra chip is in development. It will have a base design of 32 CPU cores and 64 GPU cores, but will go up to as many as 80 GPU cores.
It will likely be put into new models of the Mac Studio and Mac Pro, but don’t look for it to be released anytime soon. Gurman believes the earliest it might be released will be at the end of 2024.
The newsletter also claims to have the full roadmap for the entire new M3 chip line from Apple, which is reportedly scheduled to being in October with the standard M3 chip, made with a 3nm production process.
Gurman says M3 will have 8 CPU cores and 10 CPU cores. It will reportedly be inside the new Apple MacBooks and MacBook Air laptops, along with a new iMac and Mac mini PCs.
The M3 Pro and M3 Max chips won’t likely be released until sometime in 2024. Gurman says the M3 Pro will have either 12 or 14 CPU cores and as many as 32 GPU cores, for larger MacBook Pros and the Mac Mini. The M3 Max chip will reportedly have 16 CPU cores and as many as 40 GPU. It will also be an option for larger MacBook Pros, as well as the Max Studio.