Apple’s M7 Ultra chip designed to support 1.5TB of memory, Gurman reports

Apple ↘ 0.52% is designing its upcoming M7 Ultra chip to support up to 1.5 terabytes of unified memory, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a figure that would match the maximum RAM configuration of the 2019 Mac Pro for the first time on Apple silicon.techmeme+2

The detail emerged in Gurman's Power On newsletter published on July 12, in which he outlined Apple's chip roadmap through the M8 generation. The M7 Ultra's 1.5TB capacity would represent roughly double the planned 768GB ceiling of the M5 Ultra, which Apple is preparing to ship in a refreshed Mac Studio later this year.bloomberg+2

A Unified Memory Milestone

The 2019 Mac Pro — Apple's last Intel-based tower workstation — topped out at 1.5TB of DDR4 ECC memory across twelve DIMM slots, but only in its most expensive 24- and 28-core configurations. Since transitioning to its own silicon in 2020, Apple has steadily scaled unified memory capacity but has not reached that benchmark. The current high-water mark is 192GB on the M4 Max–based Mac Studio shipped in early 2025.apple+2

The planned M5 Ultra, expected around October 2026, has been tested with up to 768GB of unified memory, though Gurman noted that component supply constraints could limit what actually ships.MacRumors.com+1

AI Ambitions Driving the Roadmap

The M7 family, codenamed "Andros," is being built around advances in on-device AI processing, with major upgrades to the neural processing unit. Apple is skipping higher-end M6 Pro and M6 Max variants entirely, opting instead for a base M6 chip in late 2026 before moving quickly to the M7 lineup starting in early 2027. The M7 Pro and M7 Max are expected by the end of 2027, with the M7 Ultra following in 2028.idropnews+3

Gurman reported that Apple is also already developing M8 chips, which will push AI capabilities further. The aggressive timeline reflects Apple's effort to keep pace with growing memory demands for large language models and other AI workloads that benefit from vast pools of fast, unified memory — a structural advantage of Apple's system-on-chip architecture over traditional discrete designs.techmeme+1