Apple’s M5 Pro and M5 Max chips bring new Fusion design and ‘super cores’

Apple has introduced its M5 Pro and M5 Max laptop chips, which will appear first in new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models. Both processors are built on Apple’s new Fusion Architecture, which links two third-generation 3 nm dies in a single package.

The M5 Pro and M5 Max share an 18-core CPU made up of 6 high-performance “super cores” and 12 efficiency cores. Around that, Apple adds a scalable GPU, a Media Engine for video work, a unified memory controller, a Neural Engine for machine learning tasks, and Thunderbolt 5 support. The Pro and Max versions differ mainly in graphics and memory scale, but both follow the same basic layout aimed at higher performance and power efficiency in Apple’s laptops.