Apple’s current Mac chips top out at a 32GB unified memory maximum on M6, the smallest chip Apple sells, and a 512GB maximum on M5 Ultra, the largest, a 16-fold spread between the two ends of Apple’s own lineup. Every figure below comes from Apple’s own chip and machine pages published in 2026.
Unified memory is the design Apple describes as a core tenet of Apple silicon: one pool of memory shared directly between the CPU, GPU and Neural Engine, rather than separate memory reserved for each. Apple’s March 2026 release for M5 Pro and M5 Max named unified memory architecture, alongside performance and power efficiency, as one of three tenets its newer Fusion Architecture design is built to preserve while scaling a chip up.
Key facts
| Chip | Unified memory | Bandwidth |
|---|---|---|
| M6 | 16GB standard, 32GB maximum | Up to 170GB/s |
| M5 Pro | Up to 64GB maximum | 307GB/s |
| M5 Max | Up to 128GB maximum | Up to 614GB/s |
| M5 Ultra | Up to 512GB maximum | 1.2TB/s |
Where each ceiling actually ships
Apple sells all four of these ceilings as live purchasing options right now, each tied to a specific machine and price. M6’s 32GB maximum sits inside the $899 Mac mini. M5 Pro’s 64GB maximum is available in the $1,699 Mac mini and in MacBook Pro. M5 Max’s 128GB maximum comes with the $2,499 Mac Studio. M5 Ultra’s 512GB maximum is the exception: Apple has said that specific configuration of the $5,499 Mac Studio does not ship until late October 2026, a month after the machine’s own September 22 general sale date.
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| Memory maximum | Machine and starting price | Availability |
|---|---|---|
| 32GB (M6) | Mac mini, $899 | September 22, 2026 |
| 64GB (M5 Pro) | Mac mini, $1,699 | September 22, 2026 |
| 128GB (M5 Max) | Mac Studio, $2,499 | September 22, 2026 |
| 512GB (M5 Ultra) | Mac Studio, $5,499 and up | Late October 2026 |
A ceiling you cannot raise after buying
Because unified memory sits on the same package as the CPU and GPU, none of these figures can be upgraded after purchase, on any of these machines. Apple does not sell add-in memory modules for Mac mini or Mac Studio the way a traditional desktop accepts more RAM later. Choosing between M6’s 32GB maximum and M5 Ultra’s 512GB maximum is therefore a decision Apple’s own configuration options make permanent at checkout, not one a buyer can revisit once workloads grow.
Every step up roughly doubles bandwidth too
The ladder is not evenly spaced by chip tier so much as by what each chip is built for. M6 tops out at 32GB and 170GB/s. M5 Pro, a step up first sold in MacBook Pro and later added to the upper Mac mini configuration, roughly doubles both figures. M5 Max doubles memory again, to 128GB, with bandwidth reaching up to 614GB/s. M5 Ultra, built by fusing two dies together, quadruples M5 Max’s memory ceiling to 512GB while bandwidth reaches 1.2TB/s. Apple has not published a single explanatory page tying these four figures into one ladder; each number comes from the individual chip or machine release where that chip debuted.
What the bandwidth figures actually govern
Apple presents bandwidth as the figure that determines how fast the CPU, GPU and Neural Engine can pull from that shared memory pool at once, rather than as a stand-in for overall chip speed. Apple’s own material pairs the bandwidth number for each chip with claims about large language model performance specifically, since a bigger, faster-moving memory pool lets a Mac hold a larger model, or more of a model’s context, without swapping data out to storage. Apple says M5 Ultra processes LLM prompts up to 9.8 times faster than M1 Ultra and up to 4 times faster than M3 Ultra, while M6 processes prompts up to 13.5 times faster than M1 and 4.8 times faster than M4. Both are Apple’s own measurements against the specific chip Apple names, not independent benchmarks, and Apple does not publish a general-purpose speed figure that applies outside the AI and pro-workload tasks it chooses to measure.
What Apple has not said
Apple has not published memory figures for any chip beyond these four, including any M6 Pro, Max or Ultra, none of which has been announced. Apple has also not published a per-model memory figure for its current iPad lineup that would let a reader compare tablet and Mac memory ceilings on the same basis, and it publishes no independent benchmark for any of the bandwidth or LLM claims above, only its own comparisons against the specific chip it names. Apple also has not published a standard unit price per gigabyte across these configurations, and has not said whether the memory ceiling will keep doubling with each Ultra-class generation going forward.
As of September 12, 2026, the full ladder above is current and purchasable, with the 512GB M5 Ultra configuration the one exception still weeks away. This ladder sits apart from iPhone 18 Pro and its A20 Pro chip, both announced at the September 9 keynote, and every Mac on this ladder will run macOS 27 once it arrives.
