In March, Apple unveiled a new generation of Mac Studio featuring the powerful M3 Ultra and M4 Max chips. Since then, tech enthusiasts have eagerly anticipated updates regarding the Mac Pro and its potential upgrade to an even more powerful chip. While the release date for this highly anticipated model remains shrouded in mystery, recent findings from Macworld offer intriguing insights into the development of a new Mac Pro powered by the unreleased M4 Ultra chip.
According to the internal code published by Apple and reported by Macworld, the company is still in the experimental phase for a high-end Mac Pro equipped with the M4 Ultra chip. This discovery centers around the internal identifier t8152, which aligns with the M4 Ultra nomenclature and is codenamed “Hidra”. This revelation supports a previous Bloomberg report from January 2025, which hinted at Apple's ambitions to introduce a more robust variant of the M4 chip family specifically designed for the Mac Pro.
The M4 Ultra chip is poised to be the successor to the current M2 Ultra model, which boasts an impressive 24-core CPU, a GPU of up to 76 cores, and supports a staggering 192GB of unified memory. While the precise configurations of the M4 Ultra chip remain undisclosed, it is based on Apple’s latest 3nm architecture and incorporates significant improvements to the Neural Engine, optimizing it for artificial intelligence and machine learning applications. Speculatively, the M4 Ultra could feature a 32-core CPU and an 80-core GPU, starting with a base memory of 96GB, drawing from the characteristics of existing M4 chips.
Initially, it was thought that Apple might have skipped over the M4 Ultra development following the launch of the Mac Studio with the M4 Max and M3 Ultra processors, particularly given that the current Mac Pro still operates on the M2 Ultra from 2023. Despite Apple’s claims of offering “mind-blowing performance,” the absence of an updated chip has left many users wondering about the future of the Mac Pro.
While the internal code references indicate the existence of the M4 Ultra chip and its intended association with the Mac Pro, they do not provide a definitive timeline for its release. It is important to note that Apple has previously tested various chips that never made it to market. However, considering Apple’s history of developing the M3 Ultra for the Mac Studio even after the M4 was launched, the prospect of releasing a Mac Pro with the M4 Ultra during the M5 cycle seems increasingly plausible.
