Capacity for meaningful work
The M5 Ultra Mac Studio can be configured with up to 512GB of unified memory. Operating-system use and model runtime overhead reduce the capacity available for weights and context.
Measure the work, not just the chip
Memory bandwidth is a hardware specification. Measure time to first token, output speed, simultaneous requests, and task quality on representative documents before choosing a model.
A useful machine beyond inference
A Mac Studio can also serve workstation tasks. Shared workloads compete for resources, so establish capacity reservations before promising both experiences at once.