Apple ’s Mac railroad engineer have been on a tear in recent year , with high - performance chips appearing at every turn . That ’s lead to a heap of fevered hypothesis about what Apple is design next , with rumors running wild about a secretive chip codenamed “ Hidra ” that ’s reportedly in the works .

If you ’ve been wonder what to expect from the Hidra chip and desire to make signified of all the rumors , you ’re in the right post . We ’ve comb the internet for all the late estimate and collated them here , so you may find out everything you need to know about Apple ’s approaching superpowered chip . say on to get in the know .

Which Macs will get the Hidra chip?

aright now , the consensus seems to be that Hidra is an “ extremist ” tier up chip — that is , the M4 Ultra . If that ’s the case , it ’ll fare to theMac Studioand theMac Pro , but do n’t anticipate to see it anywhere else .

In premature years , these improbably powerful Macs were the only ace to get Ultra chips — devices like theMacBook ProandMac minisimply do n’t need that much power ( and probably would n’t be able to cool it anyway ) . Given that vogue , that ’s almost certainly travel to be the case again with the M4 Ultra .

Price and release date

All rumor seem to point to alaunch day of the month in 2025for the Hidra microprocessor chip . The accurate appointment , though , calculate on which Mac we ’re tattle about .

The Mac Studio , for instance , is bear to come first . Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman has variously lay claim that the new Mac Studio will launch between March and June 2025 , in the first half of 2025 , and“around the middle of the twelvemonth . ”Either manner , it looks like it ’ll be the next Mac to plunge after theMacBook Air , which is make out in the spring , Gurman says .

The Mac Pro , on the other bridge player , should add up in the second half of the year . Gurman believesthat it ’s “ on track to be ready before the MacBook Pro , though the timing is n’t yet clear . ” The MacBook Pro is often update in the surrender , so expect the Mac Pro before that .

Another possible release escort for the Hidra check is Apple ’s Worldwide Developers Conference ( WWDC ) in June 2025 . After all , Apple update both the Mac Studio and the Mac Pro at WWDC in 2023 , so it ’s happened before . What ’s more , WWDC is a developer outcome , so a big section of both computers ’ fair game audiences will be in attending . Apple could perhaps tease the Hidra chip at WWDC and launch it in Macs by and by in the class .

Performance and features

Appledidn’t release an M3 Ultra chip , so when the M4 Ultra launch , it could be a major footmark up over the M2 Ultra that came before it . And although it ’s still some way off , there are a few things we expect to see in term of specs and performance .

fit in to Mark Gurman , the M4 Ultra will probably have up to a 32 - burden CPU and up to an 80 - Congress of Racial Equality GPU . For comparison , the current M2 Ultra has a 24 - core CPU and can be configured to have up to a 76 - core GPU .

Gurman adds that “ Apple is debate allowing its eminent - end Mac desktops to support as much as ahalf - terabyte of memory . ” Outfitting the Mac Studio and Mac Pro with around 512 GB of RAM would be a significant improvement over the current limit , which stands at 192 GB . Yet it ’s still far below the 1.5 TB you could fit out the Intel - base Mac Pro with .

While we ca n’t know for sure what sort of performance those specs will translate into , news outletAppleInsiderhas interpolate some portend M4 Ultra results base on Apple ’s previous chips .

AppleInsider note that the M1 Ultra and M2 Ultra offered roughly 45 % better performance in Geekbench ’s single - heart and soul tests compared to the M1 Max and M2 Max , severally . If that was to double in the M4 generation , the M4 Ultra could score around 37,315 in Geekbench ’s single - core bench mark , up from the M4 Max ’s 25,735 grievance .

Similarly , Metal tons have increased by around 53 % when compare the top - specification Max and Ultra chips in past generations , leading AppleInsider to predict the M4 Ultra may score around 287,096 in Metal bench mark . That ’s up from the M4 Max ’s 187,645 score .

give that these are merely extrapolations , we should take them with a pinch of salt . But they do n’t sound undue based on previous results , and we know that Apple will need to show off significant performance gain to spur sale of its Mac Studio and Mac Pro computer .

What about the M4 Extreme?

There ’s another matter to crystallise up : Apple ’s much - rumored ‘ Extreme ’ microprocessor chip . This has been talked about for a few years now , with whispers previously emerging that Apple could launch anM2 Extremechip that would take its property as the ultimate Mac chip in terms of performance — and price .

Thatnever came to pass , and we ’ve pick up a mickle since then . Both Mark Gurman and intelligence website The Information have claim to have get a line from sources inside Apple that the company has ceased work on the Extreme chip . Gurman explained that the chip was too complicated and expensive to fabricate , with the result Mac Pro potential to cost at least $ 10,000 ( without any upgrades ) , making it far too recess to be worth Apple ’s clip .

Writing inApril 2024 , Gurman said that Apple has at least three M4 chip tiers on the go : the entree - grade “ Donan , ” which is the M4 ; the mid - range “ Brava , ” which we eff is the M4 Pro since Gurman said it would be in theMac mini , which came to pass ; and the high - end “ Hidra , ” which must be the M4 Ultra rather than the M4 Max because Gurman say it would be in the Mac Pro , which the Max cow dung are not .

If there was going to be an M4 Extreme , you would imagine that Gurman ’s list would brood five unlike tiers to describe for the M4 , M4 Pro , M4 Max , M4 Ultra , and M4 Extreme . see how pregnant the Extreme chip would be were it to launch as part of the M4 contemporaries , its absence from Gurman ’s account is telling .

There ’s another reason to be skeptical that the Hidra scrap correspond to the M4 Extreme , and it ’s all about the timing . We ’re only a match months away from the Mac Studio being update , yet there ’s a complete dearth of rumors arrogate that it will come with the M4 Extreme . The Mac Pro is a little further out , but the case remain the same there . Usually , boastful news like this making water out well in advance , so the lack of convincing rumors suggests that the M4 Extreme is n’t arriving any prison term before long .

Typically , Apple takes its time with liberal novel features and wants to make certain it ’s the best rather than the first , so it ’s ordinarily a right idea to expect things later on rather than rather . That ’s why we still have n’t visualize anOLED MacBook Pro , for model , despite OLED tech having been in many of thebest laptopsfor years . That does n’t intend that Apple will never launch an Extreme chip , but it feels unlikely this class . We will almost certainly see the Hidra chip , however , in the form of the M4 Ultra .