M4 Ultra: everything we know about Apple’s mysterious Hydra chip
Apple’s Mac engineers have been on the rise in recent years, with high-performance chips appearing at every turn. This has led to a lot of feverish speculation about what Apple is planning next, with rumors about a secret chip codenamed “Hydra” reportedly in the works.
If you have been wondering what to expect from the Hydra chip and want to understand all the rumors, you are in the right place. We’ve scoured the internet for the latest insights and compiled them here, so you can find out everything you need to know about Apple’s next super-powerful chip. Read on to find out.
Which Macs will get the Hydra chip?
Right now, the consensus seems to be that Hydra is an “Ultra” level chip, namely the M4 Ultra. If that is the case, you will reach the Mac Studio and the mac probut don’t expect to see it anywhere else.
In previous years, these incredibly powerful Macs were the only ones to feature Ultra chips: devices like the macbook pro and mac mini it just doesn’t need that much power (and probably couldn’t cool it anyway). Given that trend, that will almost certainly be the case again with the M4 Ultra.
Price and release date
All the rumors seem to point to a release date in 2025 for the Hydra chip. However, the exact date depends on which Mac we are talking about.
Mac Studio, for example, is expected to come first. Bloomberg journalist Mark Gurman has variously claimed that the new Mac Studio will launch between March and June 2025, in the first half of 2025, and “In the middle
The Mac Pro, on the other hand, should arrive in the second half of the year. expect the Mac Pro before then.
Another possible release date for the Hydra chip is Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June 2025. After all, Apple updated both the Mac Studio and Mac Pro at WWDC 2023, so it happened sooner. Additionally, WWDC is a developer event, so a large segment of both computers’ target audiences will be in attendance. Apple could perhaps show off the Hydra chip at WWDC and launch it on Macs later this year.
Performance and features
Apple did not release an M3 Ultra chipso when the M4 Ultra is released, it could be a big step up from the previous M2 Ultra. And while that’s still a little ways off, there are a few things we’re hoping to see in terms of specs and performance.
According to Mark Gurman, the M4 Ultra will likely have a CPU with up to 32 cores and a GPU with up to 80 cores
Gurman adds that “Apple is considering allowing its high-end Mac desktop computers to support up to half a terabyte of memory.” Equipping the Mac Studio and Mac Pro with around 512GB of RAM would be a significant improvement over the current limit, which is 192GB. However, it’s still well short of the 1.5TB you could equip the Intel-based Mac Pro with.
While we can’t know for sure what kind of performance those specs will translate into, media AppleInsider has extrapolated some predicted results of the M4 Ultra based on Apple’s previous chips.
AppleInsider noted that the M1 Ultra and M2 Ultra delivered about 45% better performance in Geekbench’s single-core tests compared to the M1 Max and M2 Max, respectively. If this were repeated in the M4 generation, the M4 Ultra could score around 37,315 in Geekbench’s single-core benchmark, up from the M4 Max’s score of 25,735.
Similarly, Metal scores have increased by about 53% when comparing high-spec Max and Ultra chips in previous generations, leading AppleInsider to predict that the M4 Ultra may score around 287,096 in tests. of Metal. That’s up from the M4 Max’s score of 187,645.
Since these are mere extrapolations, we must take them with caution. But they don’t seem unreasonable based on previous results, and we know Apple will want to show significant performance gains to spur sales of its Mac Studio and Mac Pro computers.
What about the M4 Extreme?
There is another thing to clarify: Apple’s much-rumored ‘Extreme’ chip. This has been talked about for a few years, and rumors previously surfaced that Apple could launch a M2 extreme chip that would take its place as the definitive Mac chip in terms of performance and price.
That never happenedand we have heard a lot since then. Both Mark Gurman and news site The Information claimed to have heard from sources within Apple that the company had stopped working on the Extreme chip. Gurman explained that the chip was too complicated and expensive to manufacture, and that the resulting Mac Pro would likely cost at least $10,000 (without any upgrades), making it too niche to be worth Apple’s time.
the M4 Pro since Gurman said it would be in the mac miniwhat happened; and the high-end “Hydra,” which must be the M4 Ultra instead of the M4 Max because Gurman said it would be in the Mac Pro, which the Max chips are not.
If there were an M4 Extreme, one would imagine Gurman’s list would cover five different tiers to account for the M4, M4 Pro, M4 Max, M4 Ultra, and M4 Extreme. Considering how important the Extreme chip would be if it were released as part of the M4 generation, its absence from Gurman’s account is telling.
There’s another reason to be skeptical that the Hydra chip will be equivalent to the M4 Extreme, and it’s all a matter of time. We’re just a couple of months away from the Mac Studio update, but there’s a complete lack of rumors claiming it will come with the M4 Extreme. The Mac Pro is a little further away, but the case remains the same. Big news like this usually leaks well in advance, so the lack of compelling rumors suggests the M4 Extreme won’t be arriving anytime soon.
Apple usually takes its time with big new features and wants to make sure it’s the best and not the first, so it’s usually a good idea to wait for things later rather than sooner. That is why we have not yet seen a MacBook Pro OLEDFor example, although OLED technology has been in many of the best laptops for years. That doesn’t mean Apple will never release an Extreme chip, but it seems unlikely this year. However, we will almost certainly see the Hydra chip in the form of the M4 Ultra.