alt Hacker NewsWhoah, both the Pro and Max CPUs feature 18 cores. This hasn't happened since M1 Pro/Max. This is a surprise.
Also, the mix of cores have changed drastically.
- 6 "Super cores"
- 12 "Performance cores"
I'm guessing these are just renamed performance and efficiency cores from previous generations.
This is a massive change from the M4 Max:
- 12 performance cores
- 4 efficiency cores
This seems like a downgrade (in core config but may not be in actual MT) assuming super = performance and performance = efficiency cores.
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Whoah, both the Pro and Max CPUs feature 18 cores. This hasn't happened since M1 Pro/Max. This is a surprise.
I think super cores are a new type/tier of core, not a rename of performance.
The base M5 has super/efficiency cores.
The Pro and Max have super/performance cores.
I was looking into this. The M5 performance cores can be scaled down to match efficiency cores in performance and power usage.
I believe they lower the clock speed, limit how much work is done in parallel on each core, and limit how aggressive the speculative execution is so less work is wasted.
So they renamed performance to mean efficiency and are now using super in place of performance?
I don't think the "new" Performance cores are just "renamed" "E" / "Efficiency" cores; Apple has retroactively renamed the baseline M5 nomenclature to say it has "10-core CPU with 4 super cores and 6 efficiency cores"; so they're clearly keeping the "efficiency cores" nomenclature around.
I think this is a new design, with Apple having three tiers of cores now, similar to what Qualcomm has been doing for a while.
I think how it breaks down is:
- "Super" are the old "P" cores, and the top tier cores now
- "Performance" cores are a new tier and seen for the first time here, slotting between "old" P and E in performance
- "Efficiency" / "E" are still going to be around; but maybe not in desktop/Pro/Max anymore.