Apple announced M5 Pro and M5 Max, chips for the new MacBook Pro that use a Fusion Architecture to combine two dies into a single system on a chip, and said the laptops will be available for pre-order starting tomorrow with general availability beginning the following week.
The Fusion Architecture links two third-generation 3-nanometer dies with high bandwidth and low latency, integrating an 18-core CPU, scalable GPU, Media Engine, unified memory controller, a 16-core Neural Engine, and Thunderbolt 5 capabilities, the company said in an announcement.
Apple said the chips feature an 18-core CPU with six super cores and 12 new performance cores, and deliver up to 30 percent faster multithreaded performance for pro workloads.
“M5 Pro and M5 Max are a monumental leap forward for Apple silicon, leveraging our new Fusion Architecture to scale the capabilities of Apple silicon while preserving its core tenets of performance, power efficiency, and unified memory architecture,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies.
“Both chips underscore our relentless pace of innovation, integrating the world’s fastest CPU cores, a next-generation GPU with Neural Accelerators, a faster Neural Engine, and high-bandwidth, high-capacity memory, resulting in an unparalleled combination of performance, efficiency, and incredible on-device AI capabilities for MacBook Pro.”
The GPU scales to an up-to-40-core design in M5 Max, with a Neural Accelerator in each GPU core and higher unified memory bandwidth; Apple says both chips deliver over 4x the peak GPU compute for AI versus the previous generation. M5 Pro supports up to 64GB of unified memory and 307GB/s bandwidth, while M5 Max supports up to 128GB and 614GB/s. Apple also highlights graphics uplifts: up to 20 percent over M4 Pro/M4 Max in some workloads and up to 35 percent in ray-tracing apps.
The company said the new chips bring an updated Media Engine with AV1 decode and ProRes support, Memory Integrity Enforcement for always-on memory safety, and on-chip Thunderbolt 5 controllers; MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max are offered for pre-order tomorrow, with shipments and retail availability the following week.
##The recap
Apple announced M5 Pro and M5 Max chips for the new MacBook Pro.
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M5 Max supports up to 128GB unified memory and 614GB/s bandwidth.
Pre-orders start tomorrow; general availability begins the following week.