Apple’s next-generation M6 chip is here, debuting first in the new Mac mini. And among its powerful upgrades, M6 gets a new feature previously exclusive to higher-end chips like M5 Pro and Max.
Apple’s M6 has both super cores and performance cores, a first for a base chip
Apple silicon continues advancing in big ways, and this week brought the latest evidence of that: M6 and the M5 Ultra.
Both chips offer innovations in their own ways. For example, M5 Ultra offers Apple’s first quad-die architecture, and M6 is the first 2 nanometer chip.
M6 also has a Pro-level upgrade in the type of CPU cores it has. It offers 12 cores total:
- 2 super cores
- 4 performance cores
- 6 efficiency cores
Historically, Apple’s chips have had only two cores: performance and efficiency. But that changed with the M5 Pro and M5 Max earlier this year.
Apple rebranded its previous ‘performance’ cores as ‘super cores.’ Then added a third, brand new type of core that assumed the ‘performance’ name.
The naming is a bit confusing, but here’s the breakdown from 9to5Mac’s Chance Miller:
The “super cores” are Apple’s most powerful CPU cores. These were previously called “performance cores,” but Apple renamed them in conjunction with the introduction of the new “performance cores.”
The new performance cores are now the middle-tier in the M5 chip architecture, offering a balance of power efficiency and multi-threaded performance. The performance core architecture is what’s new with M5 Pro and M5 Max.
M5 Pro and Max were, until this week, the only way to get super cores and performance cores in one chip. Now the M5 Ultra and the base M6 chip offer Apple’s two most powerful CPU cores too.
Previous base chips, like the M5, only ever offered two types of cores. But with M6, users will get all three: super, performance, and efficiency.
It’s just one of the reasons why the base M6 chip is an especially exciting year-over-year upgrade.
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