On June 5th, 2023, Apple announced their brand new chip, the M2 Ultra, which is able to deliver huge performance advancements to the Mac and finally completes the M2 chip family.
The new M2 Ultra is the largest and most capable chip that Apple has ever created, which means that the new Mac Studio and Mac pro, with this chip inside, will be the most powerful Mac desktops ever made so far.
Upgrades from Previous Generations
The all new M2 Ultra has been built by Apple using a second-generation 5-nanometer process and it is also able to connect the die of two M2 Max chips to double their performance by using Apple’s futuristic UltraFusion technology.
Inside of this M2 Ultra chip you’ll find 134 billion transistors inside of it, which is 20 billion more than what the M1 Ultra chip has, so quite an upgrade. The upgrades from the M1 Ultra doesn’t just stop there though as its unified memory architecture supports a huge 192GB of memory capacity, which is an impressive 50% more than the M1 Ultra and also features 800GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is actually double the speed that you’ll get from the M2 Max chip.
The upgrades that the M2 Ultra has over its predecessors don’t just stop there though because it also features a much more powerful CPU that is 20 percent faster than the M1 Ultra, an even larger GPU as well that is 30 percent faster as well as a Neural Engine that’s up to 40 percent faster. Apple has also added a media engine into the M2 Ultra, which has twice the capabilities of the M2 Max, which makes for extremely quick ProRes acceleration. So, in conclusion, with all of these amazing advancements that we see that the M2 Ultra has, it really takes Mac performance to a whole new level.
UltraFusion Technology
The all new M2 Ultra is essentially built from two M2 Max dies that have been connected via UltraFusion, which is Apple’s industry-leading, custom-built packaging technology. UltraFusion is a process that uses silicon interposer to connect the dies with more than 10,000 signals and is then able to provide you with over 2.5 TB/s of low-latency interprocessor bandwidth.
With the help of Apple’s UltraFusion technology, the M2 Ultra is able to appear as a single chip to software, which means that there is no need for any code to be rewritten in order to utilise the extreme performance that the M2 Ultra is capable of. So, with this UltraFusion technology, it makes the M2 Ultra unlike anything else you’ve seen in the industry.
Ultra Performance and Power Efficiency
The M2 Ultra is made up of a 24-core CPU, which further has 16 next-generation high-performance cores and eight next-generation high-efficiency cores inside of it. Thanks to this setup, the M2 Ultra is able to deliver up to 20 percent faster performance than what you would experience with the M1 Ultra. If you are a colorist who works on the Mac Studio, powered by the M1 Ultra, and uses DaVinci Resolve then you’ll be pleased to know that the Mac Studio, powered by the M2 Ultra instead, will be 50 percent faster when it comes to video processing.
You’ll get two different ways to configure the GPU, either with 60 or 76 next-generation cores. So, with the new M2 Ultra you’ll be able to get a total of up to 12 more cores as well as up to 30 percent improvement over the M1 Ultra, which already had an extremely powerful GPU. Now when you are rendering 3D effects using Octane on a Mac Studio that houses a M2 Ultra it’ll be up to three times faster than if you’d do the same thing on a Mac Studio housing a M1 Ultra.
The Ground-Breaking Unified Memory Architecture
Then moving on, we have Apple’s hallmark for Apple silicon and that is the M2 Ultra’s unified memory architecture, which is able to deliver amazing bandwidth, low latency as well as unmatched power efficiency. The M2 Ultra has 800GB/s of system memory bandwidth, which is miles better than anything you’d be able to find in a PC. However, the advanced technology doesn’t just stop there, the M2 Ultra can also be configured with an insane 192GB of unified memory, which will allow users to enable workflows that wouldn’t be possible to do on a PC.
Some More of Apple’s Latest tech in the M2 Ultra
The M2 Ultra essentially integrates a lot of Apple’s latest custom technologies that can be seen right on the chip itself, to maximise not only its performance but its efficiency as well.
For Example:
- The M2 Ultra has a 32-core Neural Engine, which is able to deliver users with 31.6 trillion operations per second that results in being 40 percent faster than the performance in the M1 Ultra.
- Since the M2 Ultra has a media engine that is twice the capabilities of the M2 Max, it is able to accelerate video processing by a considerable amount.
- The display engine that the M2 Ultra houses is able to provide its users with up to six Pro Display XDRs, which drive more than 100 million pixels.
- The M2 Ultra also offers the best security in its class as it comes equipped with the latest Secure Enclave, as well as hardware-verified secure boot and runtime anti-exploitation technologies.
Environmentally Friendly
Even though you get all of the awesome power-efficient performance possibilities with the M2 Ultra, it still doesn’t sacrifice any environmental responsibility. As of the announcement of this product, Apple is now carbon neutral for all of their global corporate operations and have also stated that by 2030 they would like to also have a net-zero climate impact across their entire business, which will not only include their manufacturing supply chains but also all of their product life cycles. So, essentially what this means is that every single chip that Apple creates will be 100 percent carbon neutral.
Final Words
So do you think that you’ll switch over to Apple finally, if you haven’t already as you see that they are not only more powerful but also very environmentally friendlier than almost every other, if not every other, brand out there.
