The specialist supply chain analyst, Ming-Chi Kuorevealed new details on the production schedule for the M5 chips, which are expected to power future Macs as well as Apple’s intelligence servers. According to him, the deployment will begin next year and will be done in stages. But above all, Apple is preparing a small revolution in the design of these future processors.
M5 chip production schedule
First, here is the production program for the different variants of Apple’s future SoC:
- Standard M5 : mass production planned for the first half of 2025.
- M5 Pro and M5 Max : production planned for the second half of 2025.
- M5 Ultra : mass production expected in 2026.
These timelines suggest the M5 Macs will launch in a similar order to the M4 models.
M5 Macs launch forecast
- MacBook Pro : likely update with M5 chips in October 2025.
- MacBook Air : update expected with the M5 chip in the first half of 2026.
- Mac Studio and Mac Pro : updates planned for the end of 2026 or 2027.
It’s not yet clear whether the iMac and Mac mini will be refreshed in 2025, as these models are not consistently updated every year.
M4 chip deployment in comparison
The M4 Macs followed a similar pattern:
- In October 2023, Apple introduced updates with M4 chips for MacBook Pro, iMac and Mac mini.
- The MacBook Air is expected to be updated by March 2024.
- Mac Studio and Mac Pro equipped with M4 Max and/or M4 Ultra chips are expected in mid-2025 to late 2025.
The technological advances of M5 chips
The M5 chips will use TSMC’s third-generation 3nm process (N3P), providing the usual performance and power efficiency improvements over the M4 chips.
But that’s not all, Apple is also working on specific variants for its artificial intelligence servers.
Currently powered by M2 Ultra chips, Apple’s intelligence servers will move to M4 chips next year. Longer term, Kuo predicts they will adopt high-end M5 chips designed specifically for artificial intelligence inference tasks. These M5 server chips, also based on the N3P process, will offer better thermal performance and will have a separate architecture between the CPU and GPU, optimized for AI. It’s unclear whether Macs will benefit from this, but it’s a safe bet that they will.
