M5 chips now have three types of core – what does this actually mean?
Source: 9to5Mac
Background
Prior to yesterday’s launch of the new M5 Pro and M5 Max chips, Apple Silicon chips had two types of core: efficiency and performance.
Apple silicon chips were a massive improvement on the Intel ones that preceded them for two reasons. First, they were substantially more powerful than even the best Intel chips at the time. Second, they offered unprecedented levels of power efficiency, significantly boosting true battery life.
That balancing act was achieved by giving the chips two types of CPU cores, efficiency and performance. For everyday tasks, the efficiency cores would be used, which was what gave the machines their great battery life. For more demanding usage, the performance cores would be used.
Three Types of Cores
Apple has now added a third core type that sits between the two. However, it has created confusion by renaming the old performance cores as super cores and reusing the performance name for the new middle‑tier core:
| Core Type | Old Name | New Name |
|---|---|---|
| Efficiency | Efficiency | Efficiency |
| Performance | Performance | Super |
| Super | — | Performance |
The simplest way to think about this, and the naming I wish Apple had used, is that we now have efficiency, balanced, and performance – but they are called efficiency, performance, and super.
Core Counts in M5 Variants
John Gruber spoke to Apple to clarify all of this and provided a handy table of what you get with each chip when speccing up the new MacBook Pro models. There are two lines for the M5 Pro, reflecting the 15‑ and 18‑core options.
| Core Type | M5 | M5 Pro (15‑core) | M5 Pro (18‑core) | M5 Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Efficiency | 6 | — | — | — |
| Performance | — | 10 | 12 | 12 |
| Super | 4 | 5 | 6 | 6 |
Dash (—) indicates that the chip does not include that core type.
What This Means
So … the base M5 chip is unchanged, but what Apple previously called the performance cores are now super cores. The more powerful variants of the chip don’t have any efficiency cores; instead, they have a new balanced core to provide the power efficiency needed for good battery life.
Image credit: 9to5Mac / Adam Valstar / Saifee Art