Apple M2 Ultra SoC Delidded, Package Size Bigger Than Intel’s Sapphire Rapids Xeon CPUs

wccftech.com:

The Apple M2 Ultra SoC may not be the x86 killer it was deemed to be but it certainly is a massive chip on its own.

We recently reported on a teardown of the Apple Mac Studio which features a design very similar to the outgoing variant. The only major difference lies within the PCB and SoC changes which are made to accommodate the new M2 Ultra chip. But while we have our first teardowns of the Apple Mac Studio itself, there were only a few who tried to delid the massive chip.

We have pictures published by Twitter user, @techanalye1, which give us the first look at an Apple M2 Ultra SoC which has been delidded. The package size itself seems to be similar to the M1 Ultra with a massive IHS featured over the multi-chiplet design. The IHS features a rectangular layer of thermal grease in the middle where the two M2 Ultra chiplets are located.

Underneath this massive IHS is the main Apple M2 Ultra SoC itself along with its 12 DRAM dies that are scattered in groups of four on each side. The chips in the middle are the two chiplets & we can note that the M2 Ultra doesn't use a soldered design but instead makes use of TIM to connect the IHS with the silicon and DRAM.

The user put an Intel Sapphire Rapids Xeon W9-3495X CPU next to the M2 Ultra SOC for comparison and the Apple chip definitely beats the flagship Xeon HEDT chip in sheer size. The reason the package is so big is not because of the two chiplets but due to DRAM being featured on the same PCB. While this makes the chip much larger than traditional designs, it also saves up a lot of space.

However, featuring this chip on a mobile form factor such as a Mac Pro Laptop doesn't seem to be an ideal choice as the cooling required to tame such a chip would be too much for the skinny