M3 Ultra could have up to 80 graphics cores
Apple's M3 Ultra chip will probably have 80 graphics cores available to users, a report proposes, with what could be the last remaining M3-generation chip expected to be massively powerful.
The Apple Silicon lineup in M1 and M2 established a pattern for the chip families, with the Ultra edition effectively offering twice the core counts and other elements of the Max version. This is because Apple effectively connected two Max chips with an interconnect and called them the M1 Ultra and M2 Ultra.
In Sunday's "Power On" newsletter for Bloomberg, Mark Gurman latches on to to the doubling mechanic in discussing what could end up being the M3 Ultra.
Gurman starts with the proposal that the M3 Ultra could have "a whopping 80 graphics cores." That is before explaining that the generations of Apple Silicon have a baseline version, a "Pro" with more CPU and GPU cores, a Max with double the graphics cores, and the Ultra that doubles both types of cores compared to the Max.
For M2, the Pro had up to 12 CPU cores and 19 graphics cores, the M2 Max had 12 CPU cores and 38 graphics cores, and the M2 Ultra went up to 24 CPU cores and 76 graphics cores.
However, "Apple deviated a bit from that approach with the new M3 line," Gurman writes. The M3 Max included more CPU cores as well as a doubling of GPU cores.
"This has implications for the M3 Ultra, which Apple hasn't announced yet," it is proposed. If continues doubling CPU and graphics cores for the Ultra, the Mac chip could end up with 32 CPU cores and 80 graphics cores.
Similarly, if memory is updated again, it's probable that Apple could include a configuration option for 256 gigabytes.
Gurman believes that the details of the Ultra edition will be known within months as testing commences, and that a launch will happen sometime in 2024.
Rumor Score: Likely
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
I may be tempted this time and take my M1 Ultra Mac Studio (128GB & 8TB SSD) and use it as my file server to replace the aging and soon to be unsupported Intel i7 powered Mac mini (64GB OWC Ram and 2 TB soldered SSD). The M1 Mac Studio trade in value is less than a possible M3 Pro mini with maximum memory and a 2 TB SD. and probably will be supported for quite a few more years.
I remember in the 70s that a 32kb memory card from Digital Equipment Corp (DEC) for my PDP-11 cost $2,000. Every generation that followed in the same form factor doubled the amount of memory for the same $2,000. The last one was 4MB. I used 1.5MB for programs and 2.5MB as a virtual swap disc for compiling Dibol code which was blazingly faster than any of the spinning platters of the day.
Of course, Apple may have found ways to reduce costs along the way so hopefully it will get a hefty price reduction, but I doubt it.
But while more cores are nice, I'd prefer more time spent on "smart" utilization of those cores. For example, over the decades there have been many development languages for Mac, Current examples would be Xojo, X, and Swift. But trying to take advantage of those multiple cores is a major challenge with them and often the overhead - especially when development time and maintenance are factored in - exceeds the benefit.
A simple answer is, "Well that application is not one fit for parallel processing." But is that always the case? I'd like the compiler to say, "Well, well, well, looks like I have 8 (or more) CPU cores. How can I segment this code so it executes in the shortest possible time?"
In other words, it seems like the field where it's beneficial to have multiple cores is pretty narrow. Sure, it makes great marketing copy. But it seems that unless one is actively involved in video editing, multiple cores, CPU or GPU, will hardly make any difference.
My workload use cases do not demand as much horsepower, but i can imagine that it must be an amazing time to work with heavy lifting workloads. Apple Studio with M?Ultra is very reasonably priced, seems cheap to me actually. I remember back in the day when people used to pony up a small fortune to get a Sparc station 5 on their desk.
Life as a computer enthusiast has never been this good and Apple leads the way.
Does anyone feel there is any merit to the rumours of a further interconnect between 2 M?Ultras into something even more extreme?
Would there even be an idea to package up many M3 Ultras into compute nodes like Nvidia is doing with their chips? The power draw from the M3 Ultra is nothing compared to their chips. Maybe this is something for Apple’s iCloud.
Doubtful that Apple enters any server hardware market. They basically stick to products and service for consumers. They barely even try to serve the education market as at it. Network servers? Requires even more commitment than the gaming market.
unless the formula has changed since the advent of Apple silicon, I think 80 cores is expected.
In the M3 image, the Pro chip is upside-down but the same GPU part is roughly doubled, M3 Pro has 18-core, M3 Max has 40-core. However, the Max chip is wider now and has a faster CPU (16-core vs 12-core):
The Ultra chip joins two Max chips along the bottom edge:
It's likely they will do the same with M3. But there could be an option to put another GPU component in the middle to make a 3x GPU.
M3 Max is 17TFLOPs (40-core), 2x would be 34TFLOPs (80-core), 3x would be 51TFLOPs (120-core). It would still be short of a 4090 with 3x but basically the same as a maxed out 2019 Mac Pro and around the same as a laptop 4090.
I expect the Mac Studio will top out at a dual chip. The Mac Pro would have more room for an extreme version with extra GPU cores and could add more memory (384GB). They might not feel that investing in a custom chip is worthwhile for such a small shipment volume though (<10k units).
Potentially this would allow them to do multiple variants of the Max/Ultra chip. The base Ultra would just put the Ultrafusion on the bottom but the Extreme version would put more GPU cores then the Ultrafusion connector. That way they have a single Ultrafusion connection in both chips.
Ultra = 2x 40-core Max
Extreme = 2x 60-core Max+
It would be a bit much to put a 60-core Max+ in a MBP but it could be an option in the Studio between Max and Ultra around $3k.
In some tests, the 4090 is 3x M3 Max, others it's 4x so a 3x chip would be competitive in a lot of real-world cases. The Nvidia 5090 isn't expected until 2025 and Apple will probably have an M4 Ultra then with maybe 25% more cores.
https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/joao-silva/rtx-5090-rumoured-be-about-70-faster-than-the-rtx-4090/
It would still be fairly competitive with a 5090 taking power usage into consideration. An M4 Extreme would be around 400W total. Nvidia GPU + Intel/AMD CPU is 700W.
Funny story: I let my daughter watch Back to the Future when she was eight. Later she was telling us that she was very scared when the lesbian terrorists shot the Doc . Took a while to work out what she meant, and then ponder why she knew the word “lesbian”.
I am intrigued that a M3 Max MacBook Pro can now be acquired that is nearly as powerful as my M1 MacStudio (128GB and 8TB SSD) with the same amount of memory and SSD in just two generations. I thought I had really future proofed my M1 MacStudio with those top go the line options. And the fully configured MacBook Prop price is fairly close to my MacStudio price.
I thought we had a good performance boost going from the 68030 in my IIci to the 68040 in my IIfx. The Intel years were snoozers in terms of performance increases over time.
But I am concerned how many more rabbits are in the hat for this M series chip to continue this pace of spec improvements. The crowd that needs and can afford the top models is far smaller than the more modest needs and prices group. With the lower operating temperatures of the M series computers, one could expect much longer service lives of the M devices.
Like the iPhone, the incremental changes are getting smaller and the crowd seems to be wanting to spread their acquisition cost over more years.
So could Apple turn off operating system support for the M1 series at some future time like they will Intel chips? And how many generations of M series will be supported?
The computing power necessary for the average non-pro users is already exceeded. One usually does not see a Ferrari V8 in a Karman Gaia.
Ultra Mac is built for media creation especially with videos and photography, not for file servers.