Apple Explains Why the New Mac Studio Doesn't Have an M4 Ultra Chip

[Schlotkins]

Because your department is ignorant. Macs are far better than garbage overpriced nvidia chips. And way much cheaper. You guys just doesnt care the cost because university pays anyway.

Plus no risk of burning anything with apple silicon.

I think this may be a bit harsh. If you get NVIDIA chips with enough VRAM, they are way, way, way faster than any Mac solution. Yes, they are way more expensive, but you only get a couple tokens per second on m2 ultra and that's if the full model fits in memory versus 10 times that on NVIDIA hardware.

Chris

 

[Siliconguy]

I assume technical difficulties for not delivering M4 Ultra

Or intended use. M4 for portable devices optimized for low power consumption. The Ultra chips and their UltraFusion high-power consumption chips for the desktop. There isn't enough demand for Ultra chips to pay for the design cost on every iteration of the Mx line.

It sounds like they reworked the M3 to add the UltraFusion and up the RAM capacity which lots of people were complaining about. They need the memory to handle the AI training.

 

[MacFin]

I think Apple has finally realised that launching the Mac Studio and Mac Pro with Ultra chips at the same time just makes the Mac Pro look like a bad value deal. Now, they’re staggering the releases, keeping the Ultra chip for the Mac Studio while making sure the Mac Pro stays in its own league.

My guess? This year, Apple is gearing up to introduce the “Extreme” chip, something fully exclusive to the Mac Pro, while Ultra chips will just be an occasional upgrade for the Mac Studio. I honestly don’t see Ultra chips being part of the Mac Pro lineup anymore. If Apple planned to keep them around, they could have easily updated the Mac Pro today with an M3 Ultra or even an M4 Ultra. But they didn’t. Instead, they’re holding out for a big moment at WWDC, where they’ll drop the Mac Pro’s major upgrade all at once. Then they can say how amazing it is compared to M1 Ultra and M3 Ultra.

For now, it looks like they just want to clear out leftover M3 Max chips, and what better way to do that than by fusing two of them together, dumping it in the Mac Studio, and calling it a day.

 

[Manzanito]

So Mac pro will stay with inferior M2 Ultra but a lot more expesinve than Mac studio?
Because i dont see why Apple didnt update the Mac pro with M3 ultra today

The only logical explanation is to give the pro an m5 at the end of the year, but apple being apple, anything goes.

 

[9081094]

so why did the m3 ultra not come out LAST summer Apple makes no sense

Because Apple has to show something and it’s spreading it out to give you the impression that there is “a lot going on” at Apple. And of course 💰. The M3 ultra is cheaper now than it was last year.

Thats Timmy’s Intelligence, money first!

 

[caribbeanblue]

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.

 

[9081094]

I thought the m3's didn't have the connectors to make ultras or something and that was they weren't making one

That’s the spin Apple gives you when it’s convenient to them.

 

[CWallace]

That...doesn't explain anything. Not all M series chips will get an Ultra designation. Ok, if they won't if they don't do it. But that doesn't explain anything about why.

The reason for no M4 Ultra that makes the most sense to me is lack of wafer capacity so they cannot make enough M4 Max to both meet demand for that SoC and an Ultra.

M3 launched some 18 months ago and Apple has transitioned mostly away from offering M3 Max in products so TSMC has the capacity now. Apple has also clearly tweaked the M3 design for the Ultra since the original launch in October 2023, adding TB5 and likely new memory controllers to address the larger 512GB maximum. Apple might also have made other tweaks (like possibly adding UltraFusion support) and that would take time, as well.

I think Apple has finally realized that launching the Mac Studio and Mac Pro with Ultra chips at the same time just makes the Mac Pro look like a bad value deal.

Honestly even if Mac Pro was updated to M3 Ultra, or even exclusively offered M4 Ultra, it is still a "bad value deal" for almost all consumers, a majority of prosumers and a heck of a lot of professionals unless said professionals work in audio.

So I could see Apple's internal projections showing that most M2 Mac Pro users would not upgrade to M3 (or even M4) and therefore will hold off.

 

[Ethosik]

That rumor was simply wrong. M3 Ultra does use UltraFusion to combine two M3 Max chips.

It’s not really two M3 Max as M3 Max is missing features like Thunderbolt 5 that the new studio supports.

 

[MrGimper]

Yes

Apple says not every Apple Silicon generation will get an Ultra

Apple released the M3 Ultra alongside M4 generation chips — but here's why we probably won't see the M4 Ultra.

appleinsider.com

Yes I’ve read that today. That just says there won’t be an ultra version of every M chip. It doesn’t answer the question I asked

 

[neilw]

The far more sensible decision from Apple would be to release the M4 Max Studio alone.

I don't get this. If the M3 Ultra is a lot faster than the M4 Max, why wouldn't they offer it? Just because the number "3" offends some people?

Recall that the Xeons offered in the Mac Pros of old generally used slower CPU cores than the consumer chips in the iMacs for instance. What they offered was large numbers of cores for highly parallelizable tasks. This is no different.

 

[Ethosik]

I thought people did M3 Max die analysis and categorically said it doesn’t have ultra fusion.

M3 Max die also didn’t have Thunderbolt 5. But the ultra does. This is just strange.

 

[Antony Newman]

I assume technicall difficulties for not delivering M4 Ultra

Or that TSMC delayed the new packing technology by 18 months that Apple wanted to use in the M5 Mac Pro ..and so rather than have an M3 Ultra Mac Studio outperform the M2 Ultra Mac Pro for 2 x Years … they delayed the (guess) April 2024 release of the M3 Ultra Mac Studio until March 2025 .. leaving only 6 months before Mac Pro was upgraded to the M5 Ultra and 4 x way M5+ Hidra?

(More rampant speculation) If the Hidra was shelved for the chip team to work on the PCC SoC, and Apple are discontinuing the M2 ASAP - Apple will let the dust settle for a few months and then let the power users know that all their dreams will come true at WWDC with the release of an a supercharged AI number crunching Mac Pro ‘later in the year’.

 

[dmr727]

The far more sensible decision from Apple would be to release the M4 Max Studio alone.

That's what makes me think this was a technical/yield problem with their attempt at an M4 Ultra. I don't think Apple is confident they can produce an Ultra beyond M3 for quite awhile.

 

[CWallace]

The far more sensible decision from Apple would be to release the M4 Max Studio alone.

Why?

The Mac Studio with M4 Max can address up to 128GB of RAM and 8TB of storage.

The Mac Studio with M3 Ultra can address up to 512GB of RAM and 16TB of storage.

One of the more common complaints on these forums is how "limited" the RAM and storage are on Apple Silicon. While 512GB is not the 1500GB the 2019 Mac Pro could address, it is a fair bit more than the 128GB of the M4 Max and the 192GB the M2 Ultra could address.

 

[svish]

Think the next Ultra chip will be an M5 version for the new Mac Pro which should come out sometime in 2026

 

[Sippincider]

It’s clear Apple isn’t taking its “Pro” Macs serious.

... and hasn't since at least the trashcan MacPro.

 

[DrNevs]

Anybody else bothered with the ‘Ultra’ branding? Kind of defeats the purpose and contradicts what the term ‘Max’ actually means

 

[Plerf]

I wonder if the Mac Pro gets an M3 Ultra tomorrow or if it does like some Mac Pros before it and just withers without updates.

 

[Plerf]

Anybody else bothered with the ‘Ultra’ branding? Kind of defeats the purpose and contradicts what the term ‘Max’ actually means

You’re gonna hate the return of EXTREME. 😛

 

[deconstruct60]

Hmmm, so that either means M4 extreme is coming, or they go straight to m5 ultra on the mac pro but at the end of the year?

No. Pretty likely means they go M3 Ultra in Mac Pro when there is more supply later in the year.
M5 Ultra likely is more than one year away. If the M5 Max 'plain/laptop' version has to retire before they make the M5 Max desktop version then the MBP 14/16" would need to be moving to M6 for the Ultra-eligible Max to appear.

I think what folks are missing is that Apple does not want to put utterly useless UltraFusion connectors on chip that will never use them. As the wafer prices get higher and the MBP 14/16" scale into the multiple millions , that is just wafers substantive stacks of expensive wafers. Wasted wafers that Apple could use to sell other products that make money.

 

[deconstruct60]

I wish they'd also explain why you can't put standard NVMe storage into these to upgrade them,

Higher security. The firmware for the boot system is incorporated into an Apple only certified storage system.

rather than having to buy all the storage you need from the start at absurdly inflated prices.

You don't have to. TBv5 makes it even easier to buy supplemental storage. "All the storage you need" is substantively different than only storage all your data on one , and only one, storage drive.

 

[Peterrocks!]

“not every chip generation will get an 'Ultra' tier," isn’t an explanation it’s a description (not every generation will get an ultra tier). An explanation would be an answer to the question “why won’t every chip generation get an ultra tier?” And specifically why won’t the M4 generation get an ultra tier?

 

[deconstruct60]

They were wrong

Or Apple produced a variant die that allows them to highly reuse the R%D design overhead. The M1 Pro and M1 Max have a high degree of overlap. The Max primarily just has 'double' the amount of GPU cores and additional Memory channel overhead tacked on. ( and the UltraFusion).

There could be a M3 Max+ ('desktop version' ) die that uses same 'un chop' general mechaism to produce a 1-5% bigger die with some extra stuff. ( UltraFusion and perhaps better PCI-e backhaul for an Mac Pro updated later).

For TSMC N3B waiting another 10-12 months would improve yields for the incrementally bigger die. So didn't start until M3 Max plain/laptop version stopped production.

However, being a slightly different die would mean bigger overhead to recoup. Hence, no economic way to dump these in the trash can every 12 months. So 'not every M-series generation' will get these.

M1 -> M2 were the beginning of the transition. M1 Mac Pro didn't even ship. If they had to wait on M3 that would have super slim chances of making their 2 year transition deadline. ( which didn't even make anyway using the M2 Ultra. So M3 would have been doomed on that deadline. )

I suspect at this point Apple knows about how many Studios/MacPros they will ship and how many MBP 14/16" Maxes they will ship and can better estimate how much they want those two to overlap in the "Max class" dies.

 

[deconstruct60]

“not every chip generation will get an 'Ultra' tier," isn’t an explanation it’s a description (not every generation will get an ultra tier). An explanation would be an answer to the question “why won’t every chip generation get an ultra tier?” And specifically why won’t the M4 generation get an ultra tier?

Ultra's sell in relatively low volume. Apple entire Apple sliicon strategy is about putting SoCs into MULTIPLE products that ship at volume. Not one SoC for every single product.

M3 starts MBP 14" , MBA 13/16 , and then iPad Air.
iPhone -> iPads/AppleTV
Watch -> HomePod.


Where are these Ultras going if churned them on a 12 month schedule? Most expensive die made and tossing it into the trash can aftrer 12 months. How did they make the money back for producing it?

The A-series are NOT thrown in trash can in 12 months. They move to new products.
plain M-series ... same thing.

The MBP 14/16" come with a Mini Pro . That maybe enough volume to toss them every 12 months , but would be totally unsurprising if Apple stuffs them into another product at some point. Mac-on-a-PCI-e card, iPad Pro supersize , etc.

If look at Intel/AMD/Nvidia they do not throw their largest dies into the trash can every 12 months. Even if they come out with something new they continue to sell the previous version. The dual edge sword is that Apple products are the only consumer for Apple Silicon. Churning the products every 12 months has a downside when get into the lower volume selling products. The bulk of the company product line up is mobile. The Ultra is NOT a mobile product chip. Which means it has a major "as obvious as a turd in a punchbowl" mismatch with the most of the product line.

If Apple wasn't trying to churn the MBP 14/16" every year then wouldn't have to skip Ultras. However, as long as they do there is a huge mismatch in economics.