Apple's M7 Ultra is designed for 1.5TB of unified memory — twice what's coming next

Apple is planning a chip that could hold more RAM than most servers. According to Bloomberg Power On (Mark Gurman), the M7 Ultra is being designed to support up to 1.5TB of unified memory — roughly double the 768GB cap planned for the M5 Ultra, and triple the 512GB ceiling on today's M3 Ultra. The catch: Gurman is explicit that this is a design target, not a shipping guarantee.

The skip no one expected

Apple is not releasing M6 Pro, M6 Max, or M6 Ultra chips at all. Only a base M6 is coming, expected in late 2026 alongside the M5 Ultra. The M7 Pro and Max follow in late 2027, with the M7 Ultra arriving in 2028. The reason for the accelerated jump, per Gurman, is AI — specifically major upgrades to the Neural Engine that Apple decided couldn't wait for an intermediate generation.

That leaves pro users in a bind. If you're on an Intel Mac Pro or waiting for a high-end Apple Silicon workstation, the next meaningful upgrade is two years out at minimum.

The memory ceiling nobody can guarantee

The 1.5TB figure would match what the 2019 Intel Mac Pro offered at peak configuration — a machine Apple positioned as its ultimate professional workstation. Hitting that number with unified memory, where CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine all draw from the same pool, would be a different kind of achievement. But Gurman warns that a global DRAM shortage is making high-capacity memory scarce and expensive. SK Hynix has flagged 2027 as potentially the worst memory shortage on record.

At current enterprise RAM prices — roughly $25 per gigabyte — a maxed-out 1.5TB M7 Ultra configuration would cost over $35,000 in memory alone. Apple may simply cap configurations lower if supply doesn't improve, or price the top tier out of reach for all but the largest studios and data-center buyers.

What it means now

For most users — even demanding creative professionals — the M5 Ultra with up to 768GB lands in late 2026 and is the relevant near-term machine. The M7 Ultra is a 2028 story, and a conditional one. Apple's roadmap signals that AI workloads are now driving silicon design more than raw clock speed, but whether that translates into a 1.5TB desktop depends on factors outside Apple's control.