Apple announced two new chips, M6 and M5 Ultra, debuting in the new Mac mini and Mac Studio, respectively, according to a company statement.

M6 is Apple's first chip built on a 2-nanometer process and features a 12-core CPU, 12-core GPU, and a Dual 16-core Neural Engine. The chip supports up to 32GB of unified memory and delivers up to 170GB/s of unified memory bandwidth, a 10 percent increase over M5. Apple claims M6 offers up to 1.2x faster multithreaded CPU performance compared to M5 and up to 2.4x faster than M1, based on internal testing conducted in August 2026.

M5 Ultra uses a quad-die architecture, connecting two dual-die M5 Max chips via UltraFusion technology, which Apple describes as a first for its M-series chips. The chip features an up-to-36-core CPU, an up-to-80-core GPU, and delivers 1.2TB/s of unified memory bandwidth, 50 percent more than M3 Ultra. It supports up to 512GB of unified memory. Apple claims M5 Ultra offers up to 4.5x the peak GPU compute for AI compared to M3 Ultra, based on internal testing in August 2026.

"Built using the cutting-edge 2 nm process, M6 combines a new CPU complex, two additional CPU and GPU cores, a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, and more unified memory bandwidth to power through workloads with amazing energy efficiency," said Sri Santhanam, Apple's vice president of Silicon Engineering Group.

Both chips incorporate Neural Accelerators within each GPU core. M5 Ultra also includes a 32-core Neural Engine. Apple Intelligence features tied to the new chips are expected to be available with macOS 27 in fall 2026, pending language and regional availability.

Apple's developer tools, including Core ML, Metal, and Xcode, are designed to utilize the hardware capabilities of both chips for on-device AI model development and execution.