Apple unveils M5 chip, supercharging AI performance

Apple has finally announced its new super-powered processor, expected to be the core of the refreshed 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Vision Pro.

The M5 chip boasts four times the processing power of the company's last entry, as well as a more powerful CPU, improved 16-core Neural Engine, and increased memory bandwidth. But most significantly to the tech giant — which has leaned into Apple Intelligence I in its recent product and feature launches — it's a major leap forward for Apple's AI and silicon investments.

"With the introduction of Neural Accelerators in the GPU, M5 delivers a huge boost to AI workloads," said Johny Srouji, Apple’s senior vice president of Hardware Technologies in a blog post. "Combined with a big increase in graphics performance, the world’s fastest CPU core, a faster Neural Engine, and even higher unified memory bandwidth, M5 brings far more performance and capabilities to MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro.”

Generative AI features, like Apple Vision Pro's Personas and Apple Intelligence's integrated tools and assistants, will be faster and more energy efficient with M5's Neural Engine, according to Apple. The company is pitching M5's next gen GPU as a revolutionary upgrade for apps running on Apple frameworks and APIs, resulting in "smoother gameplay, more realistic visuals in 3D applications, and faster rendering times for complex graphics projects and other visually intensive applications."

Not all devices will get the M5 enhancement, though, with higher end higher-end 14-inch MacBook Pros and 16-inch MacBook Pros left out of the upgrade for now, ArsTechnica reports.