M3 Max Chip Has Hidden Change That Could Affect Future 'M3 Ultra' Chip

Apple's M3 Ultra chip may be designed as its own, standalone chip, rather than be made up of two M3 Max dies, according to a plausible new theory.

apple silicon 1 feature
The theory comes from Max Tech's Vadim Yuryev, who outlined his thinking in a post on X earlier today. Citing a post from @techanalye1 which suggests the M3 Max chip no longer features the UltraFusion interconnect, Yuryev postulated that the as-yet-unreleased "M3 Ultra" chip will not be able to comprise two Max chips in a single package. This means that the M3 Ultra is likely to be a standalone chip for the first time.

This would enable Apple to make specific customizations to the M3 Ultra to make it more suitable for intense workflows. For example, the company could omit efficiency cores entirely in favor of an all-performance core design, as well as add even more GPU cores. At minimum, a single M3 Ultra chip designed in this way would be almost certain to offer better performance scaling than the M2 Ultra did compared to the ‌M2‌ Max, since there would no longer be efficiency losses over the UltraFusion interconnect.

Furthermore, Yuryev speculated that the M3 Ultra could feature its own UltraFusion interconnect, allowing two M3 Ultra dies to be combined in a single package for double the performance in a hypothetical "M3 Extreme" chip. This would enable superior performance scaling compared to packaging four M3 Max dies and open the possibility of even higher amounts of unified memory.

Little is currently known about the M3 Ultra chip, but a report in January suggested that it will be fabricated using TSMC's N3E node, just like the A18 chip that is expected to debut in the iPhone 16 lineup later in the year. This means it would be Apple's first N3E chip. The M3 Ultra is rumored to launch in a refreshed Mac Studio model in mid-2024.

Popular Stories

iOS 18

Apple Says iOS 18.4 Will Be Released in April With These New Features

Wednesday February 26, 2025 7:15 am PST by
In a recent press release, Apple confirmed that iOS 18.4 will be released in April. From the Apple News+ Food announcement:Coming with iOS 18.4 and iPadOS 18.4 in April, Apple News+ subscribers will have access to Apple News+ Food, a new section that will feature tens of thousands of recipes — as well as stories about restaurants, healthy eating, kitchen essentials, and more — from the...
cook trump

Trump Responds to Apple Keeping Diversity Policies

Wednesday February 26, 2025 6:32 am PST by
In an all-caps post on Truth Social today, U.S. President Donald Trump said Apple should fully end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. Tim Cook meeting with President Trump in 2017 "APPLE SHOULD GET RID OF DEI RULES, NOT JUST MAKE ADJUSTMENTS TO THEM," he wrote. Trump's post comes one day after Apple held its annual shareholders meeting, during which a majority of...
apple watch ultra snow

6 Features Coming to the Apple Watch Ultra 3

Tuesday February 25, 2025 9:00 am PST by
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 is expected to launch later this year, arriving two years after the previous model with a series of improvements. While no noticeable design changes are expected for the third generation since the company tends to stick with the same Apple Watch design through three generations before changing it, there are a series of internal upgrades on the way. By the time the ...
iphone 16e usb c feature

Apple Provides Reason for iPhone 16e's Lack of MagSafe

Friday February 28, 2025 4:39 am PST by
Apple has offered a reason why the iPhone 16e doesn't include MagSafe, one of the more notable omissions from its latest entry-level smartphone. According to Apple representatives who spoke to Daring Fireball's John Gruber, MagSafe is not included in the iPhone 16e because "most people in the iPhone 16e's target audience exclusively charge their phones by plugging them into a charging...
Generic iPhone 17 Feature With Full Width Dynamic Island

Latest iPhone 17 Series CAD Images in Line With Redesign Rumors

Friday February 28, 2025 2:51 am PST by
Apple is expected to embrace a new camera system design for some models in its upcoming iPhone 17 series, and the latest purported CAD images don't deviate from what we have been hearing lately about Apple's new lineup. If you do not like the sound of an iPhone with a Google Pixel-style camera bar, look away now. Seasoned leaker Sonny Dickson shared the following images in a post on X...
iPhone Fold Vertical Feature

Apple's 2026 Foldable iPhone Has No Visible Display Crease – Report

Tuesday February 25, 2025 2:58 am PST by
Apple is making significant headway on its long-rumored foldable iPhone, with a new report suggesting the company has achieved a major breakthrough by effectively eliminating the screen crease that plagues current foldable devices. According to Korean publication ETNews, Apple is finalizing its component suppliers for the foldable iPhone, with the selection process expected to be completed...
airpods pro purple

Here's When AirPods Pro 3 Are Rumored to Launch

Monday February 24, 2025 9:14 am PST by
According to a post on X today from a leaker known as Kosutami, Apple plans to launch AirPods Pro 3 in May or June this year. The leaker also claimed that an AirTag 2 will launch around the same time. Kosutami is best known as a collector of prototype Apple hardware, but they have occasionally shared accurate information about Apple's future product plans. For example, they accurately...
apple intelligence black

These New Apple Intelligence Features Are Coming in iOS 18.4

Friday February 28, 2025 3:17 pm PST by
iOS 18.4 was supposed to bring new Apple Intelligence Siri features, but Apple ended up needing to pull those capabilities from the update to continue testing. There are fewer new Apple Intelligence additions now, but there are still some new features that will make the update worth installing when it comes out in April. Priority Notifications Apple introduced Priority Notifications back at ...

Top Rated Comments

Thunderstrike76 Avatar
12 months ago
If there’s one YouTubers videos I roll my eyes constantly at it’s MaxTech.
Score: 47 Votes (Like | Disagree)
chucker23n1 Avatar
12 months ago
This is all possible, but the entire thread hinges on “the M3 Max looks, in a blurry, cropped photo, like it might not have an interconnect”, which also hinges on “the M3 Ultra’s interconnect looks exactly like the M1 and M2’s”.
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)
leman Avatar
12 months ago
When will we finally stop confusing popularity with competence? It is entirely possible that this theory is correct, however, it is unlikely to be correct simply because Yuryev said so. He knows a great deal about video editing, general computing and semiconductor technology are not really his forte though.
Score: 26 Votes (Like | Disagree)
EugW Avatar
12 months ago

When will we finally stop confusing popularity with competence? It is entirely possible that this theory is correct, however, it is unlikely to be correct simply because Yuryev said so. He knows a great deal about video editing, general computing and semiconductor technology are not really his forte though.
"not really his forte"

Heh. You are being very, very generous with that description.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
PotentPeas Avatar
12 months ago
I'm skeptical. The M3 Max die is already huge! They're going to have a 2× bigger single die for M3 Ultra? That seems crazy.

There are a number of options that could pan out.
* The interconnect is there but not clearly visible in this blurry image.
* The interconnect has changed in some way and it is not clear what we should be looking for.
* There is a different variation of the chip that has the interconnect that we haven't seen yet.
* M3 Ultra will be significantly scaled back from what we expected based on M1/M2 Ultra, being a more modest upgrade over M3 Max.
* M3 Ultra isn't even going to make an appearance this generation.
Score: 19 Votes (Like | Disagree)
leman Avatar
12 months ago

Or maybe they could try some actual courage, and admit that they're not good at building GPUs.
They are quite good at building GPUs, considering how much of the headstart Nvidia had. In some key areas (instruction scheduling, resource allocation, ALU utilization) Apple is ahead of Nvidia. I mean, we have Nvidia engineers openly saying that Apple managed to achieve things Nvidia tried and failed. There is a lot of evidence that Apple is building a superscalar GPU. It’s all quite exiting stuff for me as GPU tech enthusiast. In fact, I think that the GPU division is innovating at a much higher pace than the CPU division.
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)