On March 9, the much-anticipated "high-energy transmission" Apple Spring Conference was officially held. At the meeting, Apple brought six new products, including the iPhone 13 Green, iPhone 13 Pro, iPhone SE3, iPad Air 5, Mac Studio, and Studio Display. For most of the information of these new products, I believe many friends have a certain understanding, and the author wants to talk about this "M1 Ultra" chip.
Previously, most people, including the author, thought that Apple would release the M2 chip this time, equipped with the MacBook Air series. However, this Apple spring conference did not release the MacBook Air series, and the M2 chip did not appear, the author expects to wait until the next Apple conference to see the MacBook Air equipped with M2 chips.
As the last chip in the M1 series, the name "M1 Ultra" is also interesting, "M1 Max + M1 Max = M1 Ultra", which is made of two M1 Max chips glued together. Many netizens said: Or Apple will play, two M1 Max is called M1 Ultra. In fact, it is normal to think, according to Apple's product line, Pro and Max have been named, Apple is expected to think of a good name, only to be named "M1 Ultra".
Speaking of this new "M1 Ultra" chip, although the name is a bit "sloppy", its powerful performance is undeniable, once again refreshing the public's understanding of the M series of chips. The new chip is designed with a grain architecture that integrates two M1 Max chips, with a 20-core CPU, a 64-core GPU, 114 billion transistors, a 32-core neural engine, and a series of cross-level configurations. Supports 2.5TB/s processor interconnect bandwidth, simultaneous playback of 18 8K ProRes video streams, external up to 5 monitors, H.264/HEVC and ProRes codec and other rich functions. Gpu performance is 8 times that of the M1 chip, compared with the latest 16-core desktop CPU, the power consumption is 100W lower at the same performance, and the performance is 90% stronger at the same power consumption. At the same time, M1 Ultra uses UltraFusion technology, the connection bandwidth is 2 times higher than that of the traditional motherboard to the motherboard, the memory bandwidth is 800GB/s, and it has 128GB of unified memory.
The author believes that from the above parameters, the M1 Ultra can indeed be called "the world's most powerful personal computer chip". Although it is only a new product integrated from two M1 Max, in fact, the performance improvement is indeed not small, and the upgrade of "1+1>2" has really been realized. From the perspective of Apple's design ideas, it may provide a new direction for the design and manufacture of semiconductors. Chip research and development after all has its limits, when the performance of a single chip can not get a qualitative improvement, perhaps two-core interconnection, multi-core interconnection will be a more convenient improvement program.
As a product equipped with this new chip, the Mac Studio will undoubtedly receive more attention. It looks like an aluminum metal manufacturing process, is 7.7 inches long and 3.7 inches high, is quite compact, and is easy to place or carry. In terms of ports, Mac Studio has multiple interfaces such as front-mounted card readers, 4 USB-C (Raiden 4), 4 rear USB-C (Raiden 4) + 2 USB-A+HDMI interfaces, which can realize the connection with more external devices and expand its use scenarios. At the same time, the built-in dual centrifugal fans and air ducts, through more than 4,000 heat sink holes on the back and bottom, can obtain efficient cooling and less noise. With the blessing of M1 Ultra, in theory, this new product will become Apple's most powerful computer product, as for the performance after specific debugging, you can look forward to the actual experience of users.
This Apple Spring Conference, as always, let the public see Apple's innovation. Show muscles to show muscles, Apple's product design is indeed worthy of reference by most manufacturers, especially through the integration of two chips made of "M1 Ultra", to achieve the "1 + 1>2" upgrade, which is not all manufacturers can do the initiative. Under the premise of "M1 Ultra", how the performance of the M2 chip will be, we can look forward to Apple's next conference.