Apple unveils M5 Ultra and M6 chips for new Mac Mini and Mac Studio models
Apple introduced two new processors on Tuesday to power its latest Mac Mini and Mac Studio models: the M5 Ultra and M6 chips.
Source: TechCrunch · August 25, 2026 at 2:31 PM · AI-assisted report
Single-sourceKUALA LUMPUR, 25 AUGUST 2026 —
Apple introduced two new processors on Tuesday to power its latest Mac Mini and Mac Studio models: the M5 Ultra and M6 chips.
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The company calls the M5 Ultra its “most powerful chip ever,” combining two dual-die M5 Max chips to create Apple’s first quad-die chip, engineered for heavy AI workloads. The M5 Ultra features up to a 36-core CPU, up to an 80-core GPU, and 1.2 TB/s of unified memory bandwidth—50% more than the M3 Ultra released just 18 months ago, according to Apple.
While the M5 Ultra targets professionals running compute-intensive tasks such as complex 3D rendering, visual effects, and frontier AI models, Apple said the Mac Studio with M5 Ultra will also attract hobbyist AI developers. The M6 chip, built on a 2 nm process, is positioned for everyday users, Apple vice president of Silicon Engineering Sri Santhanam said in a press release.
The M6 chip delivers a 12-core CPU complex—two more cores than the M5—and nearly a 30% increase in peak GPU compute for AI, improving the speed of prompt processing for on-device large language models, Apple said. With the new chips and developer frameworks, users can run and fine-tune large AI models locally on Macs, Apple wrote.
Apple’s push toward on-device AI follows criticism that its Siri upgrades rely on external models like Google’s Gemini. The company has long emphasized secure, on-device processing for Face ID and Touch ID, and its latest chips extend that approach to AI workloads, offering developers a controlled environment for experimentation.
The new Mac Mini devices are available for pre-order starting at $899 and will ship after September 22.
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