Apple on Tuesday debuted the latest addition to its M line of chips, like this one was announced the new M5 Pro and M5 Max, which power the new MacBook Pro.
The tech giant says the chips are designed around its new Fusion Architecture, an advanced design that merges two dies into a single high-performance system-on-a-chip (SoC), which includes a powerful CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, Neural Engine and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities.
Both chips feature an 18-core CPU, which marks an upgrade from the 14-core configuration in the M4 Pro and 16-core in the M4 Max.
The CPU now features six “super cores,” which is Apple’s term for the highest performance cores, along with 12 new performance cores. Collectively, the CPU boosts performance by up to 30% for professional workloads.
“The GPU upgrades the next-generation architecture introduced in the M5 to a GPU with up to 40 cores,” Apple explained in a press release. “With a neural accelerator on each GPU core and higher integrated memory bandwidth, the M5 Pro and M5 Max are more than 4x the leading computing GPU for AI compared to the previous generation.”
Graphics performance is up to 20% faster overall, with ray tracing workloads improved by up to 35%.
The M5 Pro supports up to 64 GB of integrated memory, up from 48 GB in the M4 Pro, with a bandwidth of 307 GB/s. The M5 Max continues to support up to 128GB of integrated memory, with increased bandwidth to 614GB/s.
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Apple says the M5 Pro is aimed at professional users such as data designers, post-production audio designers and STEM students who need strong CPU and GPU performance, along with large amounts of integrated memory for complex projects and workloads.
The M5 Max is designed for professional users such as 3D animators, application developers and artificial intelligence researchers who run workloads that require maximum GPU computation and the highest integrated memory bandwidth, the tech giant says.
The new MacBook Pro models are available for pre-order tomorrow, with availability starting March 11.
