Apple's M4 Ultra Chip Tipped for New Mac Pro After Being Presumed Canceled [Report]

It looks like an M4 Ultra chip might still be on the table for the Mac Pro after all. A new report from Macworld claims to have found references to the unreleased processor in Apple's own internal code, countering growing speculation that the company had skipped this generation's most powerful chip.

The Mac Pro has been in an awkward spot, as it's the only Mac still running on an M2-series chip. Hopes for an M4 Ultra were pretty much dashed when it was revealed that the M4 Max lacks an UltraFusion interconnect—the key tech Apple uses to fuse two Max chips into a more powerful Ultra variant.


Digging into the code, Macworld says it found the internal identifier t8152, which matches Apple's naming scheme for an M4 Ultra, alongside the codename "Hidra." That 'Hidra' codename isn't new; it first popped up in an April 2024 report that also tied it to a more powerful Mac Pro chip.

While there are no official specs, the M4 family is built on a 3nm architecture with an improved Neural Engine. Based on the current M4 Max, a potential M4 Ultra could pack a 32-core CPU, an 80-core GPU, and start with 96GB of unified memory.

Of course, code references don't guarantee a release, as Apple has tested chips in the past that never made it to market. Still, a new Mac Pro was also spotted in a recently leaked product roadmap, so the new evidence certainly suggests an update is a real possibility.

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