What are the device limits on Mac Studio’s thunderbolt ports?

The FRONT ports on the Apple studio Max processor are USB-C, and specified limited to 10 G bits/sec.

on the ULTRA model, all are ThunderBolt 40 G bits/sec EACH.

The rear thunderbolt ports acan attain up to 40 G Bits/sec per computer port. Display data have highest priority.

You can chain up to six Thunderbolt docks or hubs or other devices on each computer PORT. But you may run out of available bandwidth first.

To support up to TWO display on one cable on a Mac, the computer port, the cable, and the first device (Dock or Display) must all be genuine ThunderBolt.

A typical 4K display uses up about 17.5 GB of cable bandwidth, so a USB-C port limited to 10 G bits/sec does not fit there at full resolution.

Mike G. wrote:

How does the device limit interact with USB devices plugged into a thunderbolt 4 port? I have an M2 Mac mini and I’ve tried using 3 different thunderbolt docks (which have multiple thunderbolt as well as USB 3.1 or 3.2 ports) with made by 2 different manufacturers and None of them were able to recognize a usb device plugged into one of the usb-a ports. Do these devices count towards the 6 device thunderbolt limit… or do they count towards some different usb device limit more like the traditional 127 usb device limit?

If you're talking about USB-A ports, those do not count towards the limit of six THUNDERBOLT devices hanging from one of the computer's Thunderbolt ports. Whether you will have enough bandwidth for everything you are hooking up would be a separate issue.

Do these USB devices work when plugged directly into the Mac Studio using a USB-C to USB adapter?

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

To support up to TWO display on one cable on a Mac, the computer port, the cable, and the first device (Dock or Display) must all be genuine ThunderBolt.

A typical 4K display uses up about 17.5 GB of cable bandwidth, so a USB-C port limited to 10 G bits/sec does not fit there at full resolution.

Dell says that their 4K UltraSharp 27 4K USB-C Hub Monitor (U2723QE)

"is is the world’s first 27" 4K monitor which allows daisy chaining of an additional 4K monitor at full resolution via USB-C—enabled by Display Stream Compression (DSC)."

But I don't know if any Macs can take advantage of that feature.

Dell also requires Windows for many of its Displays and Docks.

On the Mac, daisy chaining is only supported on genuine ThunderBolt ports, which have twice as many data pathways as USB-C ports.

Other DisplayPort 1.4 capable displays can use Display-Stream Compression (DSC) as well. But it is pure specsmanship to talk about that feature without SPECIFIC display specs at hand, because the next display you try to hook up may only support DisplayPort 1.2 and NO Display Stream Compression. [and Display Stream Compression requires substantial compute-power in the display to un-compress the data stream, so not all displays support it.]