Apple announces 2nm M6 chip and M5 Ultra in refreshed Mac Mini and Mac Studio

Apple has announced its next round of desktop silicon: a new M6 processor built on a 2-nanometer process, and an M5 Ultra that the company describes as the most powerful chip it has ever made. Both debut in refreshed Mac Mini and Mac Studio models unveiled on August 25, according to The Verge, with preorders starting alongside the announcement and shipments set for September 22 running macOS 27 Golden Gate.

The M6: Apple's first 2nm chip

The M6 moves Apple's silicon to a 2nm process for the first time, which the company says brings gains in both performance and power efficiency. The CPU grows to 12 cores from 10 in the M5, arranged as two super cores, four performance cores and six efficiency cores, and Apple claims the fastest single-threaded performance of any chip along with up to 1.2x faster multithreaded performance than its predecessor. Measured against the M4 generation in the Mac Mini, the company cites a 40 percent CPU uplift.

Graphics also steps up to a 12-core GPU from 10, with a neural accelerator built into every core, and the chip pairs with a dual 16-core Neural Engine for on-device AI workloads. It supports up to 32GB of unified memory, with bandwidth of 170GBps in the Mac Mini versus 120GBps on the M4 model. In some games, Apple says the new GPU renders ray-traced graphics up to twice as fast as the M4.

M5 Ultra fuses two M5 Max chips

The headline part is the M5 Ultra, which uses Apple's next-generation UltraFusion interconnect to join two dual-die M5 Max chips into a single quad-die package. The result is an up to 36-core CPU made up of 12 super cores and 24 performance cores, an up to 80-core GPU and a 32-core Neural Engine, with support for as much as 512GB of high-bandwidth unified memory — none of it upgradeable after purchase.

Against the outgoing M3 Ultra, Apple claims up to 1.3x faster CPU performance, up to 1.8x faster graphics and up to 4.3x faster AI compute, with memory bandwidth climbing to 1.2TB per second from 819GB per second.

Mac Studio reunifies on one chip generation

The new Mac Studio comes in M5 Max and M5 Ultra variants, ending the awkward split in which Apple sold an M4 Max Studio alongside the more powerful M3 Ultra — an M4 Ultra never existed. The exterior is unchanged from the 2022 chassis, USB-A ports included, but both models gain Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 plus storage that is twice as fast as before.

The M5 Max Studio starts at $2,499 with 36GB of memory and 512GB of storage, matching the current price of the M4 Max model after a $500 increase in June. The M5 Ultra Studio starts at $5,499 with 96GB and 1TB, which is $200 more than the current starting price of the M3 Ultra model — though that machine originally launched at $3,999. The top 512GB configuration arrives in late October with pricing still unannounced.

Mac Mini gets M6 and M5 Pro options

The Mac Mini keeps its 2024 design but offers an M6 base model at $899 with 16GB of memory and 256GB of storage, and an M5 Pro version at $1,699 with 24GB and 512GB — each $100 more than the last generation. The M5 Pro can be configured with up to 18 CPU cores and 20 GPU cores, carries 307GBps of memory bandwidth, and Apple points to heavier AI workloads such as larger diffusion models and photo and video upscaling.

Both Minis now include 2.5-gigabit ethernet with an optional 10-gigabit upgrade, double-speed storage, and Apple's N1 chip for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6. The port layout is otherwise unchanged: two front USB-C ports plus three rear Thunderbolt 4 ports on the M6, or Thunderbolt 5 on the M5 Pro. The Verge notes the previous generation became hard to find due to unexpected demand for running AI agents.

Why it matters

With the Mac Pro line wound down, the Mac Studio is now the most capable computer Apple sells, and the company is positioning these machines squarely around AI — from the M6's on-device neural engines to the M5 Ultra's enormous memory pool for frontier models. The trade-off is price: memory cost inflation has pushed every model here above its predecessor, and the 512GB M5 Ultra configuration remains unpriced. For buyers, the M5 Pro Mac Mini looks like the value pick, while professionals running large local models finally get a clear, unified upgrade path after the confusing M4 Max and M3 Ultra era.