Neural Accelerators

Apple's M5 chip has Neural Accelerators in its GPU but what do they do?

- DAVID CROOKES

APPLE'S M5 CHIP is mightily impressive. It's a huge leap forward when compared to the M4, offering up to 30% faster graphics performance and, in the case of the 10-core CPU, up to 15% faster multithreaded performance. When it was announced as the chip powering the new 14-inch MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, and Apple Vision Pro, the M5 had many in the tech industry salivating over its potential. The fact it also includes Neural Accelerators only increased the excitement.

Neural Accelerators make a big difference to the overall performance of Apple's ARM-based system-on-a-chip (SoC), and you will have likely encountered the term before... In September 2025, the Cupertino giant unveiled the A19 Pro chip for the iPhone Air, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max; it, too, contains Neural Accelerators. As with the M5 chip, these are built into each GPU core and they not only boost graphics but on-device artificial intelligence (AI) performance as well.

Apple revealed figures that show the difference they make. It said M5's 10-core GPU is capable of delivering more than 4x peak GPU compute compared to M4, and more than 6x peak GPU compute for AI performance compared to M1. It is able to achieve such power by optimizing matrix multiplication, which is a mathematical operation fundamental to artificial intelligence, machine learning, and modern computing in general.