Apple silicon · M1 to M6 · 20 chips, top-down
Inside every M-series die
Every M-series chip Apple has announced, drawn as a floorplan you can take apart. Pick a chip from the table, select a block to see what it does, turn on the data paths, or compare two dies side by side. Each chip is marked with how its layout is known, from die photograph to informed estimate.
What the family shows
Memory decides the shape
A memory interface can only sit on the die's edge, and its length grows with bus width. A 128-bit base chip is nearly square. A 512-bit Max needs two long edges lined with PHYs, and the SLC slices follow them, because each slice sits in front of the memory it serves.
The Max was a Pro with more below
For M1 and M2, Apple drew one die and cut it at two heights: the Pro is the top part, and the Max adds a second GPU half, more memory and more SLC underneath. M3 broke the pattern and gave the Max its own die.
The GPU keeps winning floor space
From M1's eight cores to M5 Max's forty with a Neural Accelerator in each, the GPU grows faster than anything else. On a Max die it is by far the largest single structure.
Two ways to exceed one die
UltraFusion joins two identical Max dies at an edge, and the system sees one chip. M5 Pro and M5 Max go further and split one chip into a CPU die and a GPU die. M5 Ultra combines both approaches: four dies.
How each layout is known
| Chip | Basis | GPU cores | CPU | Memory bus |
|---|
Sources
Core counts, memory and process come from Apple. Placement comes from the images listed here. For M1, M1 Pro, M2, M2 Pro, M3, M3 Pro and M4 I used die photographs with measured die sizes, and the M4 photograph is fully labelled. For the M3 family I also used High Yield's labelled floorplans. M1 Max and M2 Max are built from their Pro photographs, because that is how Apple built them. M4 Pro, M4 Max, M5, the M5 Pro and Max dies, and M6 have no public die image that I could find, so I arranged them from their nearest relative and marked them that way. Relative block areas are approximate, and no block here was measured by me.
- Kurnal Insights die shot gallery: photographs and die dimensions of M1, M1 Pro, M2, M2 Pro, M3, M3 Pro and M4, and the labelled M4 layout.
- Tom's Hardware on High Yield's annotated M3 family: labelled M3, M3 Pro and M3 Max floorplans.
- TechInsights, M5 Pro package analysis: separate CPU and GPU chiplets joined with hybrid bonding.
- AppleInsider on the M5 Pro and M5 Max dies: the dies are adjacent, not stacked, and are not mirror images.
- Apple Newsroom: M1 Pro and M1 Max, M2 Pro and M2 Max, M4 Pro and M4 Max, M5, M5 Pro and M5 Max, M6 and M5 Ultra.
- Specifications agree with my Apple silicon atlas, which compares the same 20 chips by the numbers.