Apple Silicon M5 chips are probably in mass production now

AppleInsider

South Korean media claims that Apple Silicon M5 chips are in mass production, which makes a lot of sense considering that the first devices that will use them are expected ship before the end of 2025.

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A report on Wednesday morning by South Korean venue ETnews says that TSMC is in the process of packaging early M5 chip production. Packaging is the last step before a new chip can be put in devices, meaning that the M5 chip is now officially in mass production.

Rumors have already laid out the timetable for the M5 chip, and appearance in Apple products. The M5 iPad Pro is expected in late 2025, Macs will get M5 late in the year, and another rumor places it in a second-generation Apple Vision Pro product before the end of the year.

The chip has already been spotted in code, too. As early as August 2023, identifiers for the M5 were spotted in CHIP tags, intended to ensure that firmware is not installed onto the incompatible hardware, among other tasks.

The M5 chip is expected to retain about the same architecture as the M1 through M4 chips, with the GPU and CPU on the same die. However, M5 Pro is rumored to split the design for the first time.

The M5 Pro and other chips are said to use manufacturer TSMC's latest chip packaging process. Called the System-in-Integrated-Chips-Molding-Horizontal (SoIC-mH). It's not clear if the core M5 uses this packaging process.

Mass production is expected in the second half of 2025 for the M5 Pro and the M5 Max, and then 2026 for the M5 Ultra. In December, it was theorized that the M5 has reportedly been in the prototyping phrase for a few months, with mass production is believed to be planned for the first half of 2025.

Other reports on Wednesday have indicated that Apple's chip partner TSMC is working on a 1nm process. This is also an obvious report, given the company's pre-existing roadmap.

It's not likely that the M5 will be manufactured with that 1nm process. Instead, the M5 processor is said to be produced by TSMC using its N3P technology, which is expected to be seen first in the iPhone 18 range.

This all said, ETnews has a good track record about Apple's supply chain moves. It has a notably poorer one when predicting timelines or product specifics from those details.

Rumor Score: Likely

Read on AppleInsider

discountopinion

Be still my heart but honestly Mac Studio is still on M2 Ultra so would not Apple be better off rolling out scaled socs for the high margin devices?

Perhaps they are skipping generations due to observ d ai related market trends

netrox

So far, we're not seeing evidence of any M4 chips having interconnects like M1/M2 Ultra uses. Maybe that's why they're doing M5 that is optimized for interconnects? 

commentzilla

The number of Star Trek jokes about the M5 are about to escalate!  

"This unit must survive." - M5, Star Date 2268

The M-5 multitronic unit, or the M-5 computer, was an advanced multitronic computer system and prototype created by DoctorRichard Daystrom during the mid-23rd century. M-5 was installed on board the USS Enterprise in 2268 as a test of its capabilities. The M-5 drills were designed to allow the unit to command and control the ship during several exploration simulations and war games.

During battle drills, the computer's self-preservation instinct became dominant, resulting in the destruction of the robot ship Woden and the deaths of several hundred Starfleet officers when it severely damaged the USS Excalibur and USS Lexington.

The senior crew attempted to cut off the computer from the ship's controls, but M-5 rerouted command functions through new data lines, and kept sending false signals through the original ones. The computer could also generate a force field around itself, effectively preventing anyone from coming near it.

Captain James T. Kirk made the computer self-destruct by asking it if it was right to kill another being. M-5 said that it was a crime against the laws of Man and God, and, believing that such a crime was punishable by death, deactivated itself.

M-5 'The Ultimate computer'

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/M-5_multitronic_unit

edited February 5

apple4thewin

commentzilla said:

The number of Star Trek jokes about the M5 are about to escalate!  

"This unit must survive." - M5, Star Date 2268

The M-5 multitronic unit, or the M-5 computer, was an advanced multitronic computer system and prototype created by DoctorRichard Daystrom during the mid-23rd century. M-5 was installed on board the USS Enterprise in 2268 as a test of its capabilities. The M-5 drills were designed to allow the unit to command and control the ship during several exploration simulations and war games.

During battle drills, the computer's self-preservation instinct became dominant, resulting in the destruction of the robot ship Woden and the deaths of several hundred Starfleet officers when it severely damaged the USS Excalibur and USS Lexington.

The senior crew attempted to cut off the computer from the ship's controls, but M-5 rerouted command functions through new data lines, and kept sending false signals through the original ones. The computer could also generate a force field around itself, effectively preventing anyone from coming near it.

Captain James T. Kirk made the computer self-destruct by asking it if it was right to kill another being. M-5 said that it was a crime against the laws of Man and God, and, believing that such a crime was punishable by death, deactivated itself.

M-5 'The Ultimate computer'

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/M-5_multitronic_unit

Searching m5 shows a BMW but M5 Computer shows your comment so yes force fields confirmed.

danox

discountopinion said:

Be still my heart but honestly Mac Studio is still on M2 Ultra so would not Apple be better off rolling out scaled socs for the high margin devices?

Perhaps they are skipping generations due to observ d ai related market trends

In light of the recent disruptions in the AI world the Ultra M4 or the Ultra M5 Macs need to hit the streets as soon as possible, particularly since so many of Apples competitors appear to be listing at sea.

tipoo

Gimme dat SoIC and thermoplastic carbon fiber composite! 

surgefilter

Imagine if/when the awaited M4 Max/Ultra MacStudios come out in June-ish and the first MacBook comes out in Q3. Heart-sinker this year before it even starts, like anybody who has an M3 anything.

blastdoor

Some wild guesses:

* M5 will have same CPU and GPU core counts with minor speed increases
* M5 will double the size/performance of the Neural Engine
* M5 pro/max/ultra will put the CPU + NE on one die and the GPU on another die
* People can mix/match pro/max/ultra CPU dies with pro/max/ultra GPU dies, so that you can customize whether you have a CPU-intensive, GPU-intensive, or both-intensive computer (but there would be limitations depending on the cooling capabilities of any given chassis) 

gwmac

I am dying to upgrade my 27 inch Intel Mac to a new Studio with an M4. I hope my wait won't be too much longer. When Apple first switched from Intel to the M series I was happy because I thought the interminable waiting for upgrades on their higher end desktops would finally be coming to an end. But it still looks like Apple will continue to skip a generation or two on the Studio and Mac Pro. 

blastdoor

gwmac said:

I am dying to upgrade my 27 inch Intel Mac to a new Studio with an M4. I hope my wait won't be too much longer. When Apple first switched from Intel to the M series I was happy because I thought the interminable waiting for upgrades on their higher end desktops would finally be coming to an end. But it still looks like Apple will continue to skip a generation or two on the Studio and Mac Pro. 

It has been disappointing, for sure. 

But... I'm not sure how much we can extrapolate from recent experience. There are two reasons why I think things *might* change:

1. AI model training and inference needs for "pro" users might increase demand for high-end Apple desktops, giving Apple more of an incentive to keep them up to date. I think Apple's vertical integration might enable them to offer a compelling solution for this market. 

2. If the M5 rumors are true, and Apple separates the CPU and GPU into separate dies (or 'tiles' or whatever you want to call them), then that should increase yields (smaller dies) and thus supply and allow for more mix-match customization between CPU and GPU (which could increase demand, because more people can pay for exactly what they need)

So... if the high-end chips are easier to make and there's more demand for them, maybe we'll get quicker updates. 

danox

blastdoor said:

gwmac said:

I am dying to upgrade my 27 inch Intel Mac to a new Studio with an M4. I hope my wait won't be too much longer. When Apple first switched from Intel to the M series I was happy because I thought the interminable waiting for upgrades on their higher end desktops would finally be coming to an end. But it still looks like Apple will continue to skip a generation or two on the Studio and Mac Pro. 

It has been disappointing, for sure. 

But... I'm not sure how much we can extrapolate from recent experience. There are two reasons why I think things *might* change:

1. AI model training and inference needs for "pro" users might increase demand for high-end Apple desktops, giving Apple more of an incentive to keep them up to date. I think Apple's vertical integration might enable them to offer a compelling solution for this market. 

2. If the M5 rumors are true, and Apple separates the CPU and GPU into separate dies (or 'tiles' or whatever you want to call them), then that should increase yields (smaller dies) and thus supply and allow for more mix-match customization between CPU and GPU (which could increase demand, because more people can pay for exactly what they need)

So... if the high-end chips are easier to make and there's more demand for them, maybe we'll get quicker updates. 

Apple needs to make/create demand for them. They can only do that if they actually release the damn computers using M4 ultra and above what is frustrating about their every other year or two year release cycle is the fact that the competition has nothing nearly as good at the desktop or even mobile laptop level overall other than adding multiple 353 watt graphics cards in the desktop or 16 gigs of memory in the mobile environment the trade off being speed (Nivida) or bigger model memory/wattage (Apple).

Apple can offer a solution with 107 watts (total wattage for everything) and 192 gigs of memory (holding larger models), with the M4 ultra’s offering even more memory 256 gigs with an even lower footprint as far wattage is concerned. Apples competition (Intel, AMD, Nvidia won’t remain deaf and dumb at the mobile and desktop areas for too much longer Apple Silicons unique advantages along with some of the new techniques if true due to DeepSeek won’t last forever the time is now, the door is open particularly in areas that are hard to break into due to market inertia…..

edited February 8