Apple announced that its $6,999 Mac Pro computer will include the new M2 Ultra chip, which is three times faster than the fastest Intel-based Mac Pro model. Some commentators believe that the release of the M2 Ultra shows Apple's ability to introduce its own processors into its entire personal computer product line. On Monday, Intel fell 4.63%, leading the chip stocks.
On Monday, June 5th, WWDC attracted the attention of the global tech industry. As Apple transitions to self-developed chips on all personal computer products, Intel's stock price has fallen.
On Monday, Apple announced that its $6,999 Mac Pro computer will include the new M2 Ultra chip, which has performance advantages over previous models that used Intel processors.
In addition to pressure from Apple, Intel also faces increasingly fierce competition from AMD and Nvidia.
On Monday, Intel fell 4.63% to $29.86, the worst performance in the chip sector. Grover Semiconductor (Grover) fell by about 4.3%, Knowles, Cirrus Logic, Mawei Technology, and AMKR fell by up to 3.7%, Texas Instruments, NXP, Analog Devices, Azenta, Microchip Technology, Qualcomm, Slab, Sijiaxun, Qorvo, Micron Technology, and others fell by more than 2.8%, and AMD, TSEM, and Nano Semiconductor rose by up to about 0.9%.
Some commentators believe that the release of the M2 Ultra shows Apple's ability to introduce its own processors into its entire personal computer product line.
The M2 Ultra chip, which will become the new computer processor, is three times faster than the fastest Intel-based Mac Pro. Jennifer Munn, Apple's engineering project management director, called the M2 Ultra a "monster in the chip."
According to Apple, the M2 Ultra is a brand-new system-level chip that can bring huge performance improvements to Macs and improve the M2 series chips. M2 Ultra is Apple's largest and most powerful chip ever, making the new Mac Studio and Mac Pro the most powerful desktop Macs ever.
Apple said that the M2 Ultra is manufactured using the second-generation 5-nanometer process and uses the company's breakthrough UltraFusion technology to connect two M2 Max chips, doubling its performance. M2 Ultra consists of 134 billion transistors, 200 billion more than M1 Ultra. Its unified memory architecture supports a breakthrough 192GB memory capacity, a 50% increase over M1 Ultra, and a memory bandwidth of up to 800GB/s, twice that of M2 Max. M2 Ultra is equipped with a more powerful CPU that is 20% faster than M1 Ultra, a larger GPU that is 30% faster than M1 Ultra, and a neural network engine that is 40% faster. In addition, this chip is equipped with a media engine that is twice as powerful as M2 Max, which is used for ultra-fast ProRes acceleration. With all these advancements, M2 Ultra once again takes Mac performance to a whole new level. Apple's Senior Vice President of Hardware Technology, Johny Srouji, said:
M2 Ultra provides amazing performance and functionality for our professional users with the most demanding workflows, while maintaining Apple's leading energy efficiency in the chip industry. With huge performance improvements in CPU, GPU, and neural network engines, coupled with huge memory bandwidth in a single system-on-chip, M2 Ultra is the most powerful chip ever created for personal computers.
This is an important milestone in Apple's self-developed chip development. In 2020, Apple launched its initial version of the self-developed chip, M1.
To Apple's supplier Intel, Apple's self-developed chip is "a new path". Gregory Bryant, a former Intel executive, said in 2021:
Apple's chips are not just about chip performance, but more about their developer ecosystem, and unifying the developer and application base they have on Apple and iPad, and bringing it to Mac. So I think it is inevitable that Mac will eventually use Apple's self-developed chips.
Technology industry research firm Gartner said in April this year that Apple's market share in global personal computer shipments in the first quarter was about 9%. However, the personal computer market has been shrinking, with total shipments down 30% year-on-year. Apple's Mac revenue in the last quarter fell 31% to $7.17 billion.