Alongside the announcement of some new Mac Studio models, including one set to be powered by the company’s M5 Ultra chip, Apple has also now introduced its first state-of-the-art 2-nanometer chip with the M6. This new chip is set to advance every compute block and deliver some gains across virtually every dimension of performance.

Of course, most of those dimensions are ones that have to do with AI, which is again the main focus of the press release and materials shared by the company for this new chip and the new Mac mini, but buried in the AI-jargon is some interesting info on how these new M6 Mac mini could bring a new era of desktop performance for all types of filmmakers, editors, and content creators.

Apple’s New M6 Chip

Announced today, the M6 chip is Apple’s first state-of-the-art 2-nanometer chip, set to deliver major advancements and improvements in nearly every way. The new chip will feature a larger 12-core CPU complex with the world’s fastest CPU core, a larger 12-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, a Dual 16-core Neural Engine, and up to 170GB/s of unified memory bandwidth.

The company also announced that the M5 Ultra is coming to its Mac Studio in a new model squarely focused on AI capabilities. Big news which the company is very excited about, at least in terms of what it can offer today for AI—but there’s more to it.

“Today, we’re debuting the next giant leap in performance and AI compute for Apple silicon with the incredibly advanced M6 and the most powerful M-series chip yet, M5 Ultra. 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. And for the ultimate desktop performance and the ability to run massive AI models, M5 Ultra features a massive GPU, now with Neural Accelerators, and more unified memory bandwidth, pushing the boundaries of what a desktop can do.” - Sri Santhanam, Apple’s vice president of Silicon Engineering Group.

While we’ll cover the M5 Ultra Mac Studio separately, the M6 is intriguing and offers new specs for everyday users, students, developers, filmmakers and editors, and—of course—AI pros and hobbyists alike.

Credit: Apple

The New M6 Mac mini

Dubbed a “pint-sized AI powerhouse” by the company, the Mac mini is getting a boost and is focused on AI, but it should be more than just an AI machine. With the M6, the Mac mini will feature a 12-core CPU — two more cores than before — with the world’s fastest single-threaded performance, so everything should feel extra snappy and responsive.

Plus, with its 12-core GPU, also with two more cores than before, which also now includes Neural Accelerators in each core for the first time on Mac mini, the overall results would be 4x faster AI performance and 2x faster graphics than the previous Mac mini with M4 provided.

The new Mac mini will come with 16GB of standard unified memory, configurable up to 32GB, plus higher memory bandwidth up to 170GB/s; multitasking is faster than ever.

Credit: Apple

Price and Availability

The new Mac mini with M6 is set to retail starting at $899 (U.S.), and a new, more powerful Mac mini with M5 Pro will start at $1,699 (U.S.). You can find more info on both models at the company’s website here.

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