Apple completely changes the architecture of its chips with a textbook “divide and conquer”

The week started with a flurry of news from Apple, something we already expected after Tim Cook’s words stating that it was going to be a “great week.” And in addition to the new iPhone 17e and iPad Airtoday it was the MacBook’s turn. In this article we wanted to focus on explaining what is special about the new M5 Pro and M5 Max processors, chips that land at the latest MacBook Pro.

The company follows the same pattern as always. First comes the base chip, the M5, which we already saw in the 14-inch MacBook Prohe iPad Pro and Apple Vision Proalong with the new MacBook Air, and then, they take advantage of their most capable equipment to welcome the most powerful variants. But this year there is something different, and that is that the company uses a new manufacturing architecture internal that Apple had not used until now in its Mac chips. We will tell you all the details.

Apple’s M4 Pro and M4 Max SoCs, in numbers

The big news: the Fusion architecture

Perhaps one of the most striking aspects of these new chips is the call ‘Fusion’ architecture. Apple has designed this SoC (system on a chip) by combining two other chips manufactured in TSMC’s third-generation 3-nanometer node. The signature promise that the chips communicate with each other through very high bandwidth and minimal latency.

Why this approach? As chips grow in number of cores and memory needs, Putting everything on a single piece of silicon becomes increasingly complicated and expensive. The solution of dividing it into two interconnected chips allows its capabilities to be scaled without sacrificing efficiency.

Each of these chips integrates CPU, GPU, neural engine, unified memory controller, Media Engine (which are the cores dedicated to processing multimedia codecs) and controllers. Thunderbolt 5. It is, in essence, the basis that makes it possible for the M5 Max to reach figures that we previously only saw in desktop chips.

A new CPU from top to bottom

Both the M5 Pro and M5 Max share the same CPU design: 18 cores organized into two very different types.

On the one hand there are the so-called super cores: six high-performance cores which Apple also incorporated into the standard M5. The company assures which are “the world’s fastest CPU cores in single-thread performance”thanks to the fact that they handle greater bandwidth, and have a new cache hierarchy and better branch prediction.

On the other hand, the chip incorporates 12 performance cores completely new, different from the efficiency cores we have seen in previous generations. They are optimized specifically for multi-threaded workloads that require sustained power without skyrocketing consumption.

The combination of both groups of cores allows, according to Apple, a jump of up to 30% in performance for professional tasks regarding M4 Pro and M4 Maxand up to 2.5 times more multi-threaded performance compared to M1 Pro and M1 Max. It will be interesting to see this performance improvement in action when we test the devices in depth.

What the M5 Pro promises

Your GPU scales up to 20 cores next generation, each with an integrated neural accelerator. Memory bandwidth goes up to 307GB/sand the chip can manage up to 64 GB of unified memory. Apple promises up to 20% more graphics performance compared to the M4 Pro, and up to 35% improvement in applications that use ray tracing, thanks to its dedicated third-generation engine included in the chip.

The shading engine is also updated, incorporating second-generation dynamic caching technology and hardware-accelerated mesh shading. What this technology basically does is simplify complex geometries into more manageable meshes for when it’s time to render.

In terms of AI, Apple claims that the M5 Pro offers more than four times the GPU performance for artificial intelligence compared to the M4 Pro, and more than six times compared to the M1 Pro.

M5 Max: the ceiling of Apple laptops

The M5 Max shares the same 18-core CPU as the M5 Pro, but doubles the graphics and memory resources. Your GPU reaches 40 coresthe unified memory bandwidth reaches 614 GB/s (twice as much as the M5 Pro) and can hold up to 128 GB of unified memory.

In graphic performance, Apple assures an improvement of up to 20% compared to the M4 Maxand up to 30% in ray tracing applications. For AI tasks, the chip promises more than four times the peak GPU performance compared to its direct predecessor and more than six times compared to the M1 Max.

With these astronomical figures, Apple puts on the table a tremendously capable chip for all types of professionals, from 3D artists to app developers, AI, etc. And in the end, having such an amount of bandwidth on a laptop makes tasks with large volumes of data much easier to digest. We will see in practice how they perform.

The rest of the package: Neural Engine, Thunderbolt 5 and security

Beyond the CPU and GPU, both chips incorporate a 16-core Neural Engine renewed, which promises a higher bandwidth connection to memory, ideal for functions of Apple Intelligence and other local AI applications.

In connectivity, the M5 Pro and M5 Max include controllers Thunderbolt 5 own integrated directly into the chip. And in terms of security, Apple highlights “Memory Integrity Enforcement”, a dedicated security protection system for the computer’s memory that, according to the company, works continuously without penalizing system performance.

On the other hand, the Media Engine included in both chips supports hardware-accelerated encoding and decoding of H.264, HEVC and ProRes, as well as AV1 decoding, as expected in this part.

The M5 Pro and M5 Max will land in stores integrated with the new MacBook Pros on March 11. Starting tomorrow, March 4, reservations begin.

Cover image | Apple

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