Apple is planning a significant shift in its Mac chip roadmap, opting to bypass the high-end variants of its upcoming M6 processor and accelerate the development of its next-generation, artificial intelligence-oriented M7 lineup, according to a report by Bloomberg. Rather than following its usual pattern of releasing Pro and Max versions of each chip generation, the company will not produce M6 Pro or M6 Max variants at all, instead jumping directly to the M7 Pro and M7 Max processors, which are currently targeted for launch in 2027.
The base M6 chip is still on track and is expected to bring meaningful performance gains over its predecessor. It is projected to deliver memory bandwidth of around 200 gigabytes per second, a notable increase from the approximately 153 gigabytes per second offered by the M5. The chip will also feature an upgraded Neural Engine, improved central processing unit performance, faster media processing capabilities, and a redesigned graphics processing unit with up to 12 graphics cores. These improvements position the standard M6 as a capable upgrade for everyday Mac users, even as Apple concentrates its high-end silicon efforts on the M7 generation.
On the M7 front, Apple is designing the entire family with artificial intelligence performance as a central priority. The base M7 chip is expected to arrive as early as the first half of 2027, with M7 Pro, M7 Max, and M7 Ultra variants currently planned for 2027 and into 2028. This approach reflects Apple’s broader strategy of aligning its most powerful Mac processors with the accelerating demands of on-device artificial intelligence workloads, rather than simply iterating on existing performance metrics. By concentrating engineering resources on the M7 generation, Apple appears to be making a deliberate bet that the next major leap in Mac computing will be defined by artificial intelligence capability rather than incremental gains in raw processing power.
In the near term, Apple still intends to release the M5 Ultra later this year alongside a refreshed Mac Studio. The flagship chip is expected to feature approximately 36 central processing unit cores and 80 graphics processing unit cores, with support for up to 768 gigabytes of unified memory. However, the company has flagged that ongoing supply constraints could affect the final configuration of the chip before it reaches the market.
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