Apple M5: New SoC apparently in production
The first Macs with an M5 chip are expected in the fall. The TSMC foundry is apparently now ready for mass production.
Headquarters of chip manufacturer TSMC in Taiwan with the company logo on the building: M5 approaching?
(Image: Michael Vi/Shutterstock.com)
Apple's chip contract manufacturer TSMC has started mass production of the next Apple Silicon M5 processor. This was reported by the electronics trade journal ET News, which is published in South Korea. According to the information, the AI performance in particular has been optimized in the new chip. Since January, other partners have been processing the chips in their packaging plants – where they are placed on their carriers and tested. According to the report, ASE from Taiwan, Amkor from the USA and JCET from China are responsible for packaging. This is already underway at ASE and Amkor, with JCET to join later.
3 nm process, but partial 3D chip stacking
Production is currently only for the basic version of the M5. This is intended for the MacBook Pro M5 in the fall and possibly for an iPad Pro M5 before that. Faster versions such as Pro, Max or even Ultra will follow later. The M5 will allegedly not be manufactured using the 2-nanometer process; Apple is said to be sticking with TSMC's 3-nanometer generation for cost reasons. Small improvements are nevertheless on the cards: we are talking about the N3P manufacturing process, which offers either five percent higher clock frequencies or up to 10 percent lower electrical power consumption compared to N3E. TSMC produces Apple's M4 generation with N3E technology.
The more powerful M5 variants from the M5 Pro onwards could bring a greater technical leap. Apple allegedly wants to use TSMC's "System on Integrated Chips" (SoIC) kit to stack several chips on top of each other for the first time. The possibilities would be varied: from cache or DRAM chips on one processor to CPU and GPU dies stacked on top of each other.
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Uncertainties about the timeline
At the moment, it is still unclear how Apple will proceed with the introduction of the M5. With the M4, the company introduced an iPad Pro for the first time before continuing with various MacBook Pro models in the fall. However, not all Macs are currently at the M4 level. For example, the MacBook Air is currently still running on the M3 chip from 2023. It is expected that the switch to M4 could take place in the spring.
An M5 model of the popular entry-level notebook would then probably not arrive for another year. A second version of the Vision Pro could also be considered for the M5. However, it is unclear when this will be released. The current model with M2 was launched in February 2024, so it will be available for a good year.
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