M5 Apple Silicon Chip Reportedly Enters Mass Production

[rp2011]

Interesting. Somebody had me run a volume shader benchmark on my M4 Mac mini and it was very, very slow.

It performs much better on Windows with the 4070.

I guess the Blender stuff you do is less dependent upon GPU?

Yes, I have a dedicated Windows machine for rendering. Windows machines are far better for rendering with a dedicated GPU. And that's the reason I got the base Mini Mini to tide me over. It's looking like the next Mac Studio with an Ultra will start getting closer to Nvidia performances.

 

[picpicmac]

I can't see it happening. The article can be found here.

Perhaps not for TSMC's "3nm" process. However, the "2nm" fab may be so expensive that trying to produce a single chip the size of a Max or even Pro size could be prohibitively too expensive for the final product. In that case, keeping each unit on a wafer small is better, and using various techniques to seam together smaller units is likely the way forward.

 

[thefrost]

Perhaps not for TSMC's "3nm" process. However, the "2nm" fab may be so expensive that trying to produce a single chip the size of a Max or even Pro size could be prohibitively too expensive for the final product. In that case, keeping each unit on a wafer small is better, and using various techniques to seam together smaller units is likely the way forward.

Interesting point made.

 

[EugW]

Apple themselves have given no indication of what the future, if any, is for the Mac Studio.

I imagine something like the new Mac Mini, but perhaps an inch taller (making it more like a cube.)

Need the extra space on top for the heat sink (either aluminum or copper as with the Ultra SoC.)

Apple has indicated they are working on servers for their own farms, but I expect those to fit in standard racks.

 

[robinp]

It's cheaper and easier to test the latest architecture on the iPad Pro first. Then expand to Macs.

Plus, with both iPads and Macbook Air being fanless, its a solid way for Apple to stress test the iPads design chassis to see if device overheats.

iPad Pro adoptions is less than ~20% YoY when compared to MacBook Airs.

You didn’t read the text to understand what my point was.

The article is about how production has started. Then the passage I quoted said iPad Pro would launch with it at the end of NEXT year.

 

[robinp]

Maybe they choose it because it's the lowest risk product?

When Apple was just buying parts from Intel, a lot of those parts had already been mass produced and tested in other products from other companies so Apple was reasonably sure that failure rates were sufficiently low.

Now that Apple makes their own CPUs, they don't have a good way of knowing that no defects exist that cause 1% to fail after a year or something. So they pick a product line where such a failure would be easiest to deal with. As a cheaper product, they could just give a replacement. Might be fairly easy to repair. And full refunds might not be so expensive.

IDK, I'm just making stuff up.

Another who didn’t read

 

[bLackjackj]

I applaud Apple and TSMC for continuing to innovate and make faster and more efficient chipsets but man I do wonder...

So companies should stop innovating because of you? Imagine if Nvidia, AMD & Intel,..just stopped & Samsung/ LG just sold the same TV for 5 years. I never understand comments like this. I’m guessing that semi conductor production & innovation should just take a hiatus for you?

 

[John_Blackthorne]

Base M5 will go in the iPad first, then the pro machines, then the consumer builds.

 

[switz]

My M4 Pro Mac mini (every option maxed) is quicker to come to life than my M1 Ultra Mac Studio (every optioned maxed). Surprised? Single core speed of each of the four "flavors" in each M series are nearly identical. So the M4 single core speed is about twice that of the M1 series. But the crux gets when the two machines are working hard and that copper heat sink in the Studio allows for more work to be done without fan noise.

Not going to scrap the Studio until it can not get operating system upgrades.

 

[cocoua]

Cant wait to pay 7.000 USD for a brand new MacPro M4 just 6 months earlier than the 1.500 MBP 14" M5 with better AI neural engine comes out!!!

 

[jeffhayford]

Can we just, pencils down, focus on getting all the machines on M4?

I need an M4 Ultra Mac Studio like a year ago. I don't want M5, M6 I just want an Ultra please.

 

[eifelbube]

This doesn’t seem to make sense

… was that way for the M4 … showed up in an iPad Pro first … i think.

 

[throAU]

M4 came out last year with the iPad Pro. Maybe this will launch in the MacBook Air.

 

[picpicmac]

There is no reason to believe that all Apple products have to be on the same generation of SoCs in the same year.

It's not even desirable.

For most humans on this planet, an M2 is far and away enough computational capability for their daily needs.

And more importantly, the newer ICs are much, much more expensive. I think most people are just not aware of how expensive, because it's difficult, it is to move to the next generation of photolithography.

Apple concentrates on the "ecology" of Apple products: they work together for the user regardless of the processor generation.

 

[robinp]

… was that way for the M4 … showed up in an iPad Pro first … i think.

Read the quote

 

[chars1ub0w]

• iPad Pro: M5 chips could debut in the devices in late 2025 or early-to-mid 2026.
  
• MacBook Pro: Models featuring M5 series chips are anticipated in late 2025.

Article Link: M5 Apple Silicon Chip Reportedly Enters Mass Production

Wow, the MBP M4 Max will be pretty short-lived under this schedule.
M5 Max is just maybe 9 months away.

Hope they can add more performance cores, and the ability to have more than 128GB of unified memory.

I wouldn't buy a MPB M4 Max now.

 

[hovscorpion12]

And the M4 Ultra?

There is some speculation that the M4 Ultra will be dropping in March/April [Spring event].

There were rumors that the Cyberpunk 2077 MacOS release will be in the beginning of spring ’25 and specifically geared towards the M4 Ultra to show off vs Nvidia’s RTX4090/RTX5090 or AMD 7900XT.

 

[turbineseaplane]

All I know is that my M4 Mini is going to last me a LONG time based upon how well it performs

The only thing I could see myself doing is getting another one with more RAM at some point, but probably not until there is an M6+ Mac Mini

 

[falkon-engine]

I’m still on M1 Max. Patiently waiting on 2 nanometer.

 

[EugW]

All I know is that my M4 Mini is going to last me a LONG time based upon how well it performs

The only thing I could see myself doing is getting another one with more RAM at some point, but probably not until there is an M6+ Mac Mini

How much RAM do you have?

I know 16 GB is sufficient for me for the foreseeable future (next couple of years), but I got 24 GB anyway, so this M4 Mac mini should last me a long time too.

The HDMI port also got a big upgrade to full 2.1, with support up to 8K 60 Hz or 4K 240 Hz.

The only drawback is that M4 Pro supports more HiDPI resolution options than M4. Given the GPU upgrade that M4 got, this seems like it is likely a software limitation. I wonder if they will do the same artificial segregation with M5 vs M5 Pro too.

 

[turbineseaplane]

How much RAM do you have?

Just 16 -- base model

 

[andrewsyd]

This can only mean one thing……. An M4 Mac Studio is about to launch, followed by a slightly faster Mac mini about a year later 😏🤭🤦🏻‍♂️😅

 

[EugW]

This can only mean one thing……. An M4 Mac Studio is about to launch, followed by a slightly faster Mac mini about a year later 😏🤭🤦🏻‍♂️😅

Yeah I might expect the next Mac mini in 2026. I wonder when the M4 Max/Ultra Mac Studio is coming though. This spring? Or fall? MacRumors suggests mid-2025.

 

[neuropsychguy]

I’m curious, what software are you running, since you’re noticing such a huge speedup?

Going from my M1 Mac mini to my M4 (non-Pro) Mac mini, there was a small but significant speed improvement for browser based activities, but it was less noticeable for my office apps, since they don’t tax the CPU very hard.

R code with RStudio is one where I’ve seen noticeable improvements. I haven’t benchmarked a lot formally, but I can knit a few page PDF R output file with images in 4 seconds on an M4 Mac Mini. The same knitting took 6.15 seconds on my M1 Pro MBP.

That’s not a huge absolute time savings but it’s 33% faster on a simple task. More involved, CPU-intensive tasks will see greater benefits. I don’t have other benchmark times but it’s snappy.

I’ve also played Civ VI on both computers (my Mini is a base model and my M1 Pro has 32 GB of RAM). Late game bogs down a bit on the M1 Pro. On the M4 Mini there’s no clear slowdown. The fans barely even come on. I have graphics set similarly and everything else matching. I’ve played the same game on both (cloud save) and seen the improvements in speed.

The M1 is by no means slow. It’s amazing. But the M4 feels like the mature chip that doesn’t appear to flinch at much.

 

[Ethosik]

Can we just, pencils down, focus on getting all the machines on M4?

I need an M4 Ultra Mac Studio like a year ago. I don't want M5, M6 I just want an Ultra please.

I thought this was the whole point of dropping Intel? This just shows Apple has been full of it since the beginning. Simply blaming Intel's product map for lack of updates to their pro line is just ridiculous at this point. They are destroying their Mac lineup. Lack of pros leads to decline of the Mac environment leads to lack of pros using it leads to lack of pro applications leads to Macs ultimately just getting downgraded to just a Macbook Air.