Apple’s M5 Chip Mirrors iPhone 17 Pro Max’s A19 Pro, Boosting Mac Performance
CUPERTINO, CA – Apple’s newly announced M5 chip for MacBook Pro models appears to be a scaled-up version of the A19 Pro found in the iPhone 17 Pro Max, delivering meaningful performance gains while maintaining design consistency across Apple’s hardware ecosystem. While Apple highlighted the M5 as representing “the next big leap in AI performance for Apple Silicon,” the company acknowledges that Windows desktops and servers currently hold a performance advantage in GPU-intensive AI tasks.
The M5’s architecture closely resembles the A19 Pro, with Apple focusing on increasing core counts and memory bandwidth.Memory bandwidth sees a “nearly 30 percent increase,” rising to approximately 153 GB/s compared to the M4’s 120 GB/s,mirroring the A19 Pro’s jump from the A18 pro (~76 GB/s to ~60GB/sec). This enhanced bandwidth benefits demanding applications like 3D rendering and AI processing, facilitated by faster LPDDR5X clock speeds.
Key GPU features, including the Neural Accelerator present in both the A19 and A19 Pro, contribute to a claimed 4x performance increase in ”GPU-based AI workloads.” This differs from the Neural engine, which handles smaller, low-power AI tasks. Apple anticipates these core designs will eventually be implemented in its server chips. The M5 also incorporates third-generation ray tracing and second-generation dynamic caching, features initially introduced in the A19 Pro.
The M5 features four high-performance and six high-efficiency CPU cores, a configuration approaching the A19 Pro’s 2/4 arrangement. Larger and more efficient caches, a defining characteristic of the A19 Pro’s CPU, are also likely present in the M5.
Apple has seemingly aligned its M-series and A-series chip progress, moving away from past discrepancies where M-series chips sometimes lagged behind the latest A-series designs.This standardization provides developers with a consistent target platform across all Apple devices, scaling performance through increased core counts and wider memory interfaces.Details on the forthcoming M5 Pro and M5 Max are expected to further expand on this core design.
