The big news is that according to Kuo, the M5 Pro, M5 Max, and M5 Ultra will use TSMC’s new packaging for those chips which is known as SoIC-mH (System-on-Integrated-Chips-Molding-Horizontal). This packaging process will improve thermals (always important to keep temps down when it comes to semiconductors) and production yields. Want to know how important production yields are? Ask Samsung Foundry whose miserable production yields have probably cost it some business.
More interesting is the design change for the high-end M5 series silicon that involves the use of separate CPU (Central Processing Unit) and GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) chips. Application processors used on smartphones use the Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC) design that integrates the CPU, GPU, and other components into a single chip. With the SoIC-mH packaging improving the thermals of the component, a chip can run at maximum speed and power for a longer time before it needs to be throttled to keep the heat down.
High-end variants of the M5 chip could have separate CPU and GPU server-grade chips. | Image credit-XTmobile
On the other hand, using the SoC design reduces the size of the integrated chip. A single SoC chip also allows for faster communications between chip components leading to lower latency.
TSMC has other customers besides Apple using the SoIC packaging (System-on-Integrated-Chips). While Apple is the foundry’s largest SoIC customer, AMD is second followed by AWS and Qualcomm.
