Apple details its M4, M4 Pro, M4 Max chips: M4 Max has up to 16 CPU cores, 128GB unified memory

Apple's new flagship M4 Max processor has been detailed, after the reveal of the M4 and M4 Pro chips, with the flagship M4 Max featuring up to 16 cores, up to 40 GPU cores, and support for up to 128GB of unified memory.

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The company is claiming that its new M4 Max processor is 400% faster than the "latest AI PC chip" which is probably aiming directly at Qualcomm's flagship Snapdragon X Elite processor. The beefed-up Apple M4 Max processor has up to 16 cores of CPU power (12 performance cores, 4 efficiency cores), with up to 40 cores of GPU power, and support for up to 128GB of unified memory.

Apple's new M4 Max will find its way inside of the new wave of MacBook Pro laptops, with its 128GB of unified RAM offering up to 546GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

• Read more: Apple's flagship M4 Max processor teased, powers new MacBook Pro laptops
• Read more: Apple M4 Pro: 'world's fastest CPU core': up to 14 CPU cores, 64GB of RAM
• Read more: Apple's next-gen M5 chip to launch by end of 2025, new iPad Pro in late 2025, or 2026

The increased memory bandwidth is crucial to AI developers, especially those working with LLMs (large language models) with over 200 billion parameters. There's also Thunderbolt 5 connectivity, offering up to 120Gbps of bandwidth.

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Apple details its new M4 Max chip: "M4 Max is the ultimate choice for data scientists, 3D artists, and composers who push pro workflows to the limit. It has an up to 16-core CPU, with up to 12 performance cores and four efficiency cores. It's up to 2.2x faster than the CPU in M1 Max and up to 2.5x faster than the latest AI PC chip. The GPU has up to 40 cores for performance that is up to 1.9x faster than M1 Max and up to an astounding 4x faster than the latest AI PC chip2 So heavy workloads like de-noising raw video footage in DaVinci Resolve Studio can now run in real time".

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"M4 Max supports up to 128GB of fast unified memory and up to 546GB/s of memory bandwidth, which is 4x the bandwidth of the latest AI PC chip. This allows developers to easily interact with large language models that have nearly 200 billion parameters. The enhanced Media Engine of M4 Max includes two video encode engines and two ProRes accelerators, making it the ultimate choice for video professionals. And like M4 Pro, M4 Max also supports Thunderbolt 5 with up to 120Gb/s data transfer capability. M4 Max rips through the most challenging pro workloads and, thanks to the energy efficiency of Apple silicon, delivers exceptional battery life in a laptop".