Apple's rumored M7 Ultra targets 1.5TB of memory and Blackwell-class AI performance 11%
By Luke James31%
7/13/2026, 12:02:52 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 19 faulty reasoning types, including Confirmation Bias, Overconfidence Bias, and Ambiguity (Equivocation), with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 40.3% saturation with 222 hits. Analysis detected 806 faulty-reasoning hits from 551 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 28.2% and a BS Rank of 11% (18,853 of 21,180 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 89.00% of the article peer group.
Apple's planned M7 Ultra chip is being designed to support up to 1.5 TB of unified memory and to push AI performance toward the class of Nvidia's Blackwell accelerators, according to a new Bloomberg report published by Mark Gurman.
But whether the lofty top memory config can ship at all will depend on the state of the memory market, and the part isn't expected until 2028.
The same report says Apple has compressed its Mac silicon timeline, taping out the M7 roughly six months after the M6.
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We've already heard that Apple plans to release a base M6 chip this fall for entry-level Macs, then skip the Pro, Max, and Ultra versions of that generation and move straight to the M7 line.
However, Gurman now reckons that we'll see a base M7 in the first half of 2027, M7 Pro and M7 Max at the end of 2027, and the M7 Ultra in 2028.
Apple reportedly began taping out the M7 about six months after it started the same process for the M6, which is what has enabled the company to pull the schedule forward.
Apple's rumored M-series roadmap Chip
Rumored timing
Reported details
M6 (base)
Fall 2026
Entry-level Macs only; Pro/Max/Ultra skipped this generation
M7 (base)
H1 2027
Taped out roughly six months after M6
M7 Pro / M7 Max
End of 2027
N/A
M7 Ultra
2028
AI performance "closer to" Nvidia Blackwell-class accelerators; up to 1.5TB memory (~2x the M5 Ultra's planned capacity), supply-dependent
M8 (Soko)
By 2028
Built on a 1.4nm process; further AI gains
Cardinal
2028 generation
High-end Macs
The 1.5 TB target for the M7 Ultra is roughly twice the capacity Apple has planned for the M5 Ultra, per Gurman, who tied the configuration directly to memory availability.
Apple already pulled the 128GB Mac Studio this year over supply constraints as DRAM prices climbed, and a 1.5 TB part would call for far more of the same scarce, high-cost memory.
Apple's current M3 Ultra already reaches 819 GB/s of memory bandwidth by fusing two Max dies, and it's the Ultra tier, not the base chips, that carries the heaviest local-AI workloads.
Gurman describes the M7 Ultra as a large step up in AI performance rather than stated parity with Nvidia's data-center silicon.
"I'm told the processor dramatically upgrades AI performance, bringing it closer to the class of dedicated AI accelerators such as Nvidia Corp.'s Blackwell," Gurman wrote in his report.
Apple is also preparing an AI server built on the M5 Ultra under the code name J246 for deployment soon, with a second server chip based on the M7 Ultra planned for 2029, according to the report.
The 2028 generation, which includes an M8 chip code-named Soko and a high-end Mac part called Cardinal, moves to a 1.4nm process.
That aligns with TSMC's A14 node , which the foundry has scheduled for mass production in the second half of 2028.
None of the dates or specifications have been confirmed by Apple.
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