Charting the course of the M5 processor
This week’s Apple updates are, to some quarters, boring. Yes, it’s true, there were no real exterior changes this week. Instead, it was just another new Apple-designed processor, with the usual, boring set of speed improvements.
As Stephen Hackett noted, this is what we wanted, what Mac users were desperate for in the Intel days:
A predictable update schedule means that incremental updates are inevitable. Revolution then evolution is not a bad thing; it’s okay that not every release is exciting or groundbreaking. It’s how technology has worked for decades.
…but some people have short memories. Before the Apple silicon introduction, we all wanted steady, predictable progress in Mac hardware development. We wanted each product in the lineup to be updated regularly and not wither on the vine for years. For the most part, Apple has delivered. Just look at this chart of the progress Apple has made since the M1 on the CPU side of things:
Stephen’s post contains some charts, disappointingly not in some sort of 512 Pixels style where all the “colors” are different Atkinson dithers of gray. Maybe next time.
It reminded me, though, that I have tried to build some charts to help visualize how Apple’s chip progress is going. I wrote about this for the A series of chips back in September. Here are the requisite M series charts:
It’s nearly impossible to isolate the rise in the speed of Apple’s two different kinds of CPU cores, and over time, it tweaks one or the other and changes the mix of both, but obviously each individual core gets faster and the gestalt over the entire processor, whether it’s got eight or ten CPU cores, is a more dramatic move upward.
In the second chart, I’ve divided the Geekbench GPU score by the total number of GPU cores on the system to create an isolated view of per-core GPU performance. As with last month’s A19 Pro release, it’s clear that this generation offers a “standard” bump for the CPU, but a more impressive one for the GPU.
So the very, very broad overview of what the M5 brings is a lot like the overview of the A19: In this generation, the CPU cores got a bit better, and the GPU cores took a much larger jump.
Assuming that M5 Pro and Max chips are in the offing in 2026, loaded with GPU cores, I anticipate some pretty explosive GPU test results. But so far, through five chip generations, Apple has proved to be a bit shifty from generation to generation. It would be wild if it just never released higher-end M chips, wouldn’t it? But not impossible.
If you appreciate articles like this one, support us by becoming a Six Colors subscriber. Subscribers get access to an exclusive podcast, members-only stories, and a special community.