Apple’s highest-end M3 ultra chip is currently limited to Mac Studio, but a new leak has shown that Apple has also tested the chip in MacBook Pro.
One in Post today On the Chinese social media platform Bilibili, a user who is not familiar, said that he found the code references for the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro model with the M3 Ultra Chip in the internal construction of iOS18 in the internal construction of iOS18. In particular, he said that he found J514D and J516D codenames in the file located in/Appleinternal/Diags/Testing/Folders.
The J514 and J516 M3 Pro and M3 Max Chips are codenames for the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, which were introduced by Apple in October 2023. However, these special codenames have the suffix “D”, which possibly refers to an ultra chip. For example, Mac Studio with M3 Ultra is named J575D.
Apple has never released the MacBook Pro with Ultra Chip, so this is a remarkable discovery.
Currently, the M3 Ultra is the fastest Mac chip that Apple has ever released. It supports up to 32-core CPUs, up to 80-core GPU, and up to 512 GB integrated memory, so they could have been McBook Pro Spac in an alternative universe.
Instead, Apple updated 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M4, M4 Pro, and M4 Max Chip options in October last year. Apple is most likely that McBook Pro has decided not to provide M3 Ultra Chip in Pro, possibly due to more thermal and battery life effects for laptops than a desktop computer.
With M4 Max, MacBook Pro can be configured up to 16-core CPU, up to 40-core GPU, and up to 128GB integrated memory.
Overall, it appears that Apple considered the McBook Pro model with at least M3 Ultra Chip, but it is unlikely that they will be released anytime.
