Apple debuted the latest addition to its M-series chips on Tuesday, announcing the new M5 Pro and M5 Max. These chips power the new MacBook Pro.
The company says the chips are engineered around its new Fusion Architecture. This advanced design merges two dies into a single, high-performance system on a chip. The SoC includes a powerful CPU, a scalable GPU, a Media Engine, a unified memory controller, a Neural Engine, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities.
Both chips feature an 18-core CPU. This marks an upgrade from the 14-core configuration in the M4 Pro and the 16-core in the M4 Max. The CPU now features six “super cores,” which is Apple’s term for its highest-performance cores, alongside 12 all-new performance cores. Collectively, the CPU boosts performance by up to 30 percent for professional workloads.
Apple explained that the GPU scales up the next-generation architecture introduced in the M5 to an up-to-40-core GPU. With a Neural Accelerator in each GPU core and higher unified memory bandwidth, the M5 Pro and M5 Max deliver over four times the peak GPU compute for AI compared to the previous generation.
Graphics performance is up to 20 percent faster overall, with ray-tracing workloads improving by as much as 35 percent.
The M5 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory, up from 48GB on the M4 Pro, with a bandwidth of 307GB per second. The M5 Max continues to support up to 128GB of unified memory, with its bandwidth increased to 614GB per second.
Apple says the M5 Pro is aimed at professional users such as data modelers, post-production sound designers, and STEM students. These users need strong CPU and GPU performance along with large amounts of unified memory for complex projects.
The M5 Max is designed for professional users such as 3D animators, app developers, and AI researchers. These users run workloads that demand maximum GPU compute and the highest unified memory bandwidth.
The new MacBook Pro models are available for pre-order tomorrow, with availability beginning on March 11.