Rumor: Apple M5 enters mass production, will boost AI performance
The upcoming Apple M5 chips for iPads and Mac laptops, desktops and workstations should enhance the artificial intelligence (AI) performance.
ETNews reports that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) has begun churning out the base version of the M5 chip, with the more powerful M5 Pro, M5 Max and M5 Ultra versions to follow soon.
Apple will use these chips in future products, such as the next MacBook Pro, iPad Pro and Vision Pro models. The M5 might also power what Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman called a “total redesign” of the MacBook Pro lineup, which is said to gain OLED displays and become even thinner and lighter in 2026.
Rumor: Apple M5 enters mass production, will boost artificial intelligence performance
The publication has learned that the M5 is fabbed on TSMC’s 3-nanometer process technology, resulting in performance gains and lower power consumption.
The base version of the M5 should be included in entry-level versions of the MacBook Pro laptop, the next iPad Pro and the second-generation Vision Pro headset (which should have Apple Intelligence)—all rolling out in 2025.
In 2026, the more powerful M5 Pro, M5 Max and M5 Ultra versions should be leveraged in more powerful MacBook models and the next Mac Studio and Mac Pro workstations. The Cupertino tech giant is even expected to use the M5 Pro chips to power Apple Intelligence servers.
Rumor: Apple M5 enters mass production, will boost AI performance
Apple silicon has included a dedicated neural network hardware since 2017, called Neural Engine, to make possible features like Face ID, on-device Siri capabilities and natural language processing, as well as speed up other AI tasks.
Unsurprisingly, Apple’s semiconductor engineers have focused on boosting AI performance by utilizing new process technology for the M5, called N3P. Compared to the previous M4 chip produced using TSMC’s second-generation 3-nanometer process, N3E, the power efficiency has improved by approximately five to ten percent while the performance has improved by five percent. N3P is basically an optical shrink of N3E with increased transistor density. For context, the base M3 chip contains 28 billion transistors.
Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said in 2024 that the M5 might feature a more separated CPU and GPU to improve performance and boost production yields. This is in contrast to the current system-on-a-chip design, which tightly integrates all the components, including the CPU and the GPU, within a single package.
TSMC is the world’s leading semiconductor foundry, with clients including Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and others. The company operates cutting-edge semiconductor plants that churn out chips based on clients’ designs and specifications at scale.
Source link: https://www.idownloadblog.com/2025/02/05/apple-m5-mass-production-rumor/
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