No M4 Ultra Chip? Apple Confirms the M4 Max Chip Lacks UltraFusion - MacRumors
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No M4 Ultra Chip? Apple Confirms the M4 Max Chip Lacks UltraFusion

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A spokesperson for Apple has told French technology website Numerama that its M4 Max chip lacks an UltraFusion connector, which would have paved the way for the release of a doubled-up M4 Ultra chip in the future.

M4 M4 Pro vs M4 Max Feature
As we recently covered, Apple told Ars Technica that not every generation of M-series chips for Macs will include an "Ultra" chip. That seems like Apple indirectly confirming that it has no plans to release an M4 Ultra chip, and the M4 Max's lack of UltraFusion technology makes it even more likely there won't be an M4 Ultra chip.

Apple could still design an M4 Ultra chip from scratch, but it seems to have downplayed this possibility, according to the Numerama report.

The new Mac Studio announced today is available with M4 Max and M3 Ultra chip options, with no M4 Ultra chip offered. Apple says the M3 Ultra chip is essentially two M3 Max chips fused together with its UltraFusion technology, so the chip's specs are all doubled compared to the M3 Max. There was speculation last year about the M3 Max chip lacking UltraFusion technology, but Apple's announcement today has proven that rumor was false.

In summary, the M3 Max chip has an UltraFusion connector, but the M4 Max chip does not.

The M3 Ultra chip features up to a 32-core CPU, up to an 80-core GPU, a 32-core Neural Engine, and support for up to 512GB of unified RAM. Apple says the M3 Ultra chip is up to 1.5x faster than the M2 Ultra chip, and up to 1.8x faster than the M1 Ultra chip. To learn more about the chip, read our coverage of Apple's announcement.

Related Roundup: Mac Studio
Buyer's Guide: Mac Studio (Caution), Mac Pro (Don't Buy)
Related Forums: Mac Studio, Mac Pro

Top Rated Comments

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fathergll
15 months ago
Max Tech furiously filming a Youtube video as we read this
Score: 37 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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MrRoberto
15 months ago
The interesting thing is that they said the same thing about the M3 chip last year at WWDC, that it had no interconnects to create an M3 Ultra and that's why there will be no Mac Studio released in 2024, lack of M3 Ultra was the explanation.

Now, wonder of wonders, there is an M3 Ultra available after all for the Mac Studio but no M4 Ultra, due to the lack of interconnects?
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sherwinzadeh Avatar
sherwinzadeh
15 months ago
UltraFusion doesn't scale the performance of multiple processors well. My guess is that M3 Ultra is the last chip with UltraFusion and they're working on something completely new that wouldn't be ready in time for M4 Ultra.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Nugget Avatar
Nugget
15 months ago

At this point I’d make a bet that the Mac Pro will have its own monolithic chip.
Judging from history it seems just as likely that the Mac Pro will not see an update for another 4 or 5 years and when it eventually does it will come with an apology and promise of renewed focus from Apple.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
L
Lounge vibes 05
15 months ago

The interesting thing is that they said the same thing about the M3 chip last year at WWDC, that it had no interconnects to create an M3 Ultra and that's why there will be no Mac Studio released in 2024, lack of M3 Ultra was the explanation.

Now, wonder of wonders, there is an M3 Ultra available after all for the Mac Studio but no M4 Ultra, due to the lack of interconnects?
Apple absolutely never said that, people just speculated about it here
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
E
Ethosik
15 months ago
Isn’t the M3 Ultra technically M3.5? It has Thunderbolt 5 and other things that are not present in M3 Max. So it’s not just two of them connected.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
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