Apple M5

Apple M5 is an ARM-based system on a chip designed by Apple Inc., part of the Apple silicon series, including a central processing unit, a graphics processing unit, and a neural processing unit. The M5 SoC was announced on October 15, 2025 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro, succeeding the Apple M4 chip.

Design

The M5 is built using third-generation 3-nm technology.

CPU

The M5 features a 10-core CPU design with up to four performance cores and six efficiency cores. Apple describes the performance cores as "the world's fastest performance core." The CPU delivers up to 15 percent faster multithreaded performance compared to M4.

GPU

The M5 introduces a next-generation 10-core GPU architecture featuring a dedicated Neural Accelerator integrated into each core. This architecture delivers over 4x the peak GPU compute performance for AI compared to M4, and over 6x peak GPU compute for AI performance compared to M1.
The GPU includes enhanced shader cores and Apple's third-generation ray-tracing engine, providing up to 45 percent graphics uplift in applications using ray tracing compared to M4. Overall graphics performance is up to 30 percent faster than M4 and up to 2.5x faster than M1. The GPU also features rearchitected second-generation dynamic caching.
The Neural Accelerators in each GPU core can be programmed directly by developers using Tensor APIs in Metal 4. The GPU architecture is designed for seamless integration with Apple's software frameworks, including Core ML, Metal Performance Shaders, and Metal 4.

Neural Engine

The M5 includes an improved 16-core Neural Engine that works alongside the Neural Accelerators in the GPU cores to optimize the chip for AI workloads.

Memory

M5 features unified memory bandwidth of 153.6 GB/s, representing nearly a 30 percent increase over M4 and more than 2x over M1. The unified memory architecture enables the CPU, GPU, and Neural Engine to access a large single pool of memory. M5 supports up to 32 GB of memory capacity.

Display controller

For Apple Vision Pro, the M5 includes an enhanced display controller that renders 10 percent more pixels with the micro-OLED displays and supports refresh rates up to 120 Hz, resulting in crisper details, more fluid display performance, and reduced motion blur.

Performance

Apple claims the M5 delivers over 4x the peak GPU compute performance for AI compared to M4, and over 6x compared to M1. Graphics performance is up to 45 percent higher than M4 in ray-traced applications, with overall graphics performance up to 30 percent faster than M4 and up to 2.5x faster than M1. CPU multithreaded performance is up to 15 percent faster than M4.