Apple M5 chip • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple M5 chip

#191

Post by t-3 » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

ksec wrote: post #103

mumber_typhoon wrote: post #44

The M5 MacBook Pro still gets the Broadcom WiFi chip but the M5 iPad Pros get the N1 and C1X (Sweet). All in all, apple is doing some incredible things with hardware. Software teams at apple really need to get their act together. The M1 itself is so powerful that nobody really needs to upgrade that for most things most people do on their computers. Tahoe however makes my M1 Air feel sluggish doing the exact same task…

The Broadcom WiFi support 320Mhz while N1 is stuck with 160Mhz. There were report of N1 not supporting 4096 QAM as well but I didn't check.

I doubt the number of people in both "has no neighbors" and "owns Apple hardware" camps are significant at all.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#192

Post by pixelpoet » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

gzer0 wrote: post #116

M5 Chip currently only avaialble with up to 32 GB of RAM on the 14 inch Macbook pro variant, just FYI. [1] https://www.apple.com/us-edu/shop/buy-mac/macbook-pro/14-inc...

That's laughable in 2025, and together with the wimpy 153 GB/s memory bandwidth (come on, Strix Halo is 256GB/s at a fraction of the price!) they really don't have a leg to stand on calling this AI-anything!

Re: Apple M5 chip

#193

Post by kgwgk » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 2:25 PM UTC

mentalgear wrote: post #134

mohsen1 wrote: post #87

First time seeing Apple using "AI" in their marketing material. It was "Machine Learning" and "Apple Intelligence" before...

Unfortunately, they have also succumbed to the AI hype machine. Apple, calling it by its actual name "machine learning" was about the only thing I still liked about Apple.

> actual name "machine learning"

Yesterday’s hype is today’s humility.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#194

Post by relativeadv » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

outcoldman wrote: post #183

Marketing: M5 announcement [1] says 4x the peak GPU compute performance for AI compared to M4. I guess in the lab? Both iPad and MBP M5 [2][3] say "delivering up to 3.5x the AI performance". But all the examples of AI (in [3]), they are 1.2-2.3X faster than M4. So where this 3.5X is coming from? What tests did Apple do to show that? --- 1. https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/10/apple-unleashes-m5-th... 2. https://www…

Its not uncommon for Apple and others to compare against two generations ago rather than the immediately preceding one

Re: Apple M5 chip

#195

Post by Retr0id » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

Havoc wrote: post #119

randomtoast wrote: post #8

A unified memory bandwidth of 1,224 gigabits per second is quite impressive.

I was looking at that number and thinking opposite - that's oddly slow at least in context of new apple chip. Guessing that's their base tier and it'll increase on the higher spec/more mem models.

Perhaps they're worried that if they make the memory bandwidth too good, people will start buying consumer apple devices and shoving them into server racks at scale.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#196

Post by trymas » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

hannesfur wrote: post #167

It’s unfortunate that this announcement is still unspecific about what they improved in the Neural Engine. Since all we know about the Neural Engine comes from Apple papers or reverse engineering efforts ( https://github.com/hollance/neural-engine ), it’s plausible that they addressed some quirks to enable better transformer performance. They have written quite interesting papers on transformers on the Neural Engine:…

> the main thing limiting Apple Intelligence (in my opinion) will continue to be the 8 GB of unified memory they still insist on.

As you said - it won’t help previous generations, though since last year (or two??) all macs start with 16GB of memory. Even entry level macbook airs.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#197

Post by exabrial » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

Apple's software division has lost their way. They've done nothing but add flashy features and move buttons around, deprecating things and breaking backwards compatibility (yeah, 32bit has been awhile now, but alas), meanwhile retreating on stability.

Snow Leopard still remains the company's crown achievement. 0 bloatware, 0 "mobile features on desktop" (wtf is this even a thing?), tuned for absolute speed and stability.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#198

Post by endemic » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 2:26 PM UTC

imcritic wrote: post #55

mumber_typhoon wrote: post #44

The M5 MacBook Pro still gets the Broadcom WiFi chip but the M5 iPad Pros get the N1 and C1X (Sweet). All in all, apple is doing some incredible things with hardware. Software teams at apple really need to get their act together. The M1 itself is so powerful that nobody really needs to upgrade that for most things most people do on their computers. Tahoe however makes my M1 Air feel sluggish doing the exact same task…

[flagged]

No more than any other company.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#199

Post by geodel » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

KeplerBoy wrote: post #100

mikepurvis wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sixteen years ago, John Gruber wrote: > Hardware and software both matter, and Apple’s history shows that there’s a good argument to be made for developing integrated hardware and software. But if you asked me which matters more, I wouldn’t hesitate to say software. All things considered I’d much prefer a PC running Mac OS X to a Mac running Windows. https://daringfireball.net/2009/11/the_os_opportunity At the time I…

I bet most people around here would prefer fully supported linux over mac os on their apple silicon.

"Fully supported by whom" is the issue and important one. Apple won't do it and going by support from "most people around here" Hector Martin et al got crumbs for years, nowhere near to support the development.

One can just hand wave "Apple must support Linux and all" but that is not going to get anything done.

Re: Apple M5 chip

#200

Post by yalogin » Wed, Oct 15, 2025, 2:27 PM UTC

It feels like apple is “ a square peg in a round hole” when it comes to AI - atleast for now.

They are not the hardware provider like nvidia, they don’t do the software and services like OpenAI or even Microsoft/oracle. So they are struggling to find a foothold here. I am sure they are working on a lot of things but the only way to showcase them is through their phone which ironically enough feels like not the best path for apple.

Apple’s best option is to put llms locally on the phone and claim privacy (which is true) but they may end up in the same Siri vs others situation, where Siri always is the dumber one.

This is interesting to see how it plays out